Diagram XI and XII

2020 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

12 x 20 x 10 inches, 15 x 16 x 7 inches

Jes Fan

The Diagram series relates broadly both to Jes Fan’s interests in body modification and gender hacking as well as the artist’s investment in destabilizing hegemonic categories such as gender, monogamy, and the classical individuated subject in favor of more creative, egalitarian, and communal modes of envisioning ourselves. As a whole, the series consists of forms which originate from the bodies of Fan’s milieu of friends and collaborators in New York. Fan first creates a mould of a concrete anatomical feature on a specific body which captures their attention (for example: the pectorals or biceps). These moulds are used to cast the aforementioned anatomical forms in aqua resin, from which point Fan begins an intuitive process of composing a given sculpture by both abstracting from, duplicating, splitting, and working within its ready-made geometries. Diagram XI is derived from casts of the breasts of an ex-lover and Diagram XII is a cast of the nape of Fan’s friend’s neck which has then been rotated. The process itself is labor-intensive, involving long duration of hand-sanding and oiling of the surfaces. The resulting organic geometry and fluctuating joinery of these pieces evoke the permeable, semi-transparent layers of skin covering human bodies, tissues of internal organs or carapace of ocean creatures. In his deliberate openings and closings of skin-like waves, Fan questions where a body begins and ends. Intuitive craft and the idea of touching are of prime importance here; the works both invite touch and evidence the accumulated result of it. The blown glass elements, which Fan has been working with since very early in their career, are meant to be cradled and/or held by the aqua resin forms without the use of any adhesive in reference to non-normative models of symbiosis, co-existence, or care.

Jes Fan is a Brooklyn-based artist born in Canada and raised in Hong Kong. Speculating on the intersection of biology and identity, his trans-disciplinary practice emerges from a sustained inquiry into the concept of otherness as it relates to the materiality of the gendered body. Working primarily in expanded sculpture, Fan often incorporates organic materials—such as soybeans and depo-testosterone into larger assemblages fashioned of welded steel, poured resin, and hand-blown glass. His projects have focused on the bio-politics of transgender identity and the slippery nature of embodiment in an ear where HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and less extreme body-modification tactics such as bodybuiling are easily accessible, allowing the subject to mode their external body to match their internal state. Fan’s recent research has explored the complex and porous systems formed between biological agents (including those existing in our own body) and the surrounding environment, seeking to queer the traditional hierarchy between organic and inorganic matter.

Colors:

• sex.n.04
• hegemony.n.01
• monogamy.n.01
• community.n.01
• body.n.01