Jes Fan In Flux | Art21 “New York Close Up” (2019)

Video (7:09): Short film by Art21 about queer artist Jes Fan‘s Recess artist residency in Brooklyn. (2019).

Excerpt from the description of the film:

How can we be certain that the binary can satisfy us?
A trained glass artist, sculptor Jes Fan creates elegant installation works that quietly question our most fundamental assumptions about gender, race, and identity. At UrbanGlass in downtown Brooklyn, the artist heats, rolls, and sculpts molten glass. He explains, “Learning how this matter transformed itself from one state into another really entranced me into thinking, ‘How I can I apply it to other mediums?'”

At the Recess artist residency in Brooklyn, Fan constructs a new work, filling hollow glass globules with silicone and injecting them with politically charged biological materials like testosterone, estrogen, melanin, and fat. These organ-like forms are then hung on a lattice structure. Detaching biological substances from the context of the body, Fan is able to examine their meanings and allow the viewer to see them in a completely new light.

Fan’s personal experiences—moving from his native Hong Kong to the United States, growing up queer, and transitioning—have profoundly shaped his artistic practice.(…) – Art21

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