Hand-blown glass globules injected with melanin, black mould, soybean-filled capsules, testosterone-laden soap, oestrogen-rich cosmetics, and his own mother’s urine: through these evocative materials, Jes Fan offers a critical means to explore properties that he describes as both politically contested and utterly absurd. Experimenting with the very markers of biology that typify identity formation, and thus the constructions of the racialised and gendered body, Fan’s works make evident the fraught intersection between biology and identity. Trained as a glassmaker, Fan frequently creates bulging hand-blown glass orbs, which he injects with hormonal substances. Glass changes in shape and matter throughout the process of its creation; when it is formed, its transparency and capacity to contain other objects further accentuates its potential for multiplicity. In sculptural works like Systems II (2018), bloated glass pieces containing suspended specks and droplets of melanin, testosterone, and oestrogen sag and hang off over rigid resin and metal armatures. Conceived as an accumulation of the themes and forms that have characterised his previous work to date, Fan’s new sculpture for The Milk of Dreams addresses the glands and interiority of life through an animistic approach to objects and a sculptural exploration of the body’s entanglement with technology.
Madeline Weisburg
