BACKGROUND

Bachelor of Fine Arts

Pratt Institute

Master of Fine Arts

Yale School of Drama

Member

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

AWARDS

EXCELLENCE IN PRODUCTION DESIGN

Art Director's Guild – Ugly Betty (ep. "The Box and the Bunny")

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Asia Pacific Film Festival – The Story of Xiao Yu

BEST SET DESIGN

Drama Logue Award – Through the Leaves

Wing Lee grew up in New York City’s Lower East Side in Manhattan. He attended public schools, studied industrial design at Brooklyn Tech High School, and received a BFA in art from Pratt Institute where he majored in illustration and graphic design. After a short stint at an ad agency, he realized he was more interested in the storytelling and collaborative aspects of theater and film. He applied for and was accepted into the Yale School of Drama, where he studied set design under Ming Cho Lee. Upon graduation from Yale with an MFA in 1983 he worked as Ming’s assistant on Death of a Salesman and The Entertainer, both at the Guthrie theater. During this period, Wing received a Drama Log Award for best set design for the play Through The Leaves. Wing was soon hired as a set designer at ABC Television where he spent the next few years designing sets for the news, sports and soap operas.

Wing’s first motion picture as a Production Designer was “A Great Wall”, the first American film to be shot in mainland China. The movie received the award for Best Foreign Film in 1987 from the Kansas City Film Critics Circle. Years later, President Barack Obama requested to see the movie in preparation for his first trip to China and Steven Spielberg also watched the movie prior to making “Empire of the Sun”. Wing’s next film was “The Last Good Time”, directed by Bob Balaban starring Armand Mueller- Stahl and Maureen Stapleton, which earned awards at the 1994 Hampton Film Festival and the Avignon Film Festival. In 1996, Wing worked with Al Pacino, who directed a film interpretation of the Broadway play Chinese Coffee starring Pacino and Jerry Orbach. He also designed the TV pilot, “Elizabeth Street” produced by Martin Scorsese and the documentary “My Voyage To Italy”, which Scorsese directed.

One of the movies Wing is most proud of is “Three Seasons”, the first American feature shot in Vietnam after the embargo. It won the 1999 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, Grand Jury Prize and Cinematography Award. “Three Seasons” was the first Sundance film to receive all three awards. Other films he was Production Designer on includes “Revenge of the Green Dragons”, “Almost Perfect”, “Turn of Faith” and “Blue Moon” starring Ben Gazzara and Rita Moreno. Wing was also the Art Director of numerous feature films and television shows such as “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead” directed by Sidney Lumet, “Stoker”, directed by Chan-wook Park, “The Professional”, directed by Luc Besson, “High School Musical”, “Blindspot”, “Billions”, “Law & Order SVU”, “Cop Land”, and “The Honeymooners”, among others.

• Wing’s most recent film is “The Paper Tigers”, written and directed by Bao Tran, is currently garnering excellent critical reviews and making the national as well as international festival circuits. The film has been picked up for a theatrical release in the spring of 2021. His latest project is “A Father’s Son”, based on Henry Chang’s novels featuring a Chinatown detective starring Tzi Ma, Ronnie Chieng and Perry Yung.

• Wing received The Asia-Pacific Film Festival award for best Production Design for “Siao Yu”, directed by Sylvia Chang, produced by Ang Lee; and an Art Director’s Guild award for his work on the TV series “Ugly Betty”.

• Wing is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829 and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.