Austin Lee “Hold” (2022) (detail)
I’ve been asking a lot of people about their first phone. Mine, the LG Vu—an iPhone wannabe—never had the sexy silhouette of a Motorola Razr, or the fidget friendliness of a T-Mobile Sidekick. But what the Vu did have was a peek into what was to come, and a decade and some change later, we now carry around what seems to be an alternate world in our pocket. A second life. However, artist Austin Lee might argue that the world resting in our Bottega bag is not so different from the world outside of it.
