Jes Fan: Infectious Beauty | Art21 "New York Close Up"

In a visual era dominated by the shiny, happy aesthetic of social media, artist Jes Fan walks the fine line between the beautiful and the grotesque, creating sculptures which simultaneously attract and repulse with their glossy finishes, near-erotic shapes, and use of contested biological materials like testosterone and melanin. Fascinated by the mechanisms that construct our cultural conceptions of race and gender, Fan’s work subtly challenges viewers to examine some of their most deeply held assumptions. "When you think of beauty in the past, it's beauty and the sublime," says Fan. "It has to come with this suspension, this fear. It also meant, in the past, to describe something that was so beautiful that it almost makes you want to puke."

Filmed at work in his Smack Mellon studio, Socrates Sculpture Park, and a biology lab, Fan also visits Yale University Medical Library for an arresting look at the work of nineteenth century painter Lam Qua. The painter’s famed portraits of everyday Chinese subjects with medical “deformities” provide crucial inspiration and historical precedent for Fan.

Jes Fan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more about the artist at:
https://art21.org/artist/jes-fan/

CREDITS | "New York Close Up" Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Director & Editor: Jia Li. Camera & Sound: Jia Li. Additional Camera: Yiwei Chen. Color Correction: Jerome Thélia. Sound Design & Mix: Gisela Fullà-Silvestre. Design & Graphics: Chips. Artwork Courtesy: Jes Fan. Music Courtesy: Audio Network & Lee Rosevere. Archival Footage: CBS, CNA, & The Guardian. Thanks: Rollie Abrams; Carver Audain; Brooklyn Bio; Cushing/Whitney Medical Library At Yale University; Cut + Measure; Empty Gallery; Kathleen Gilrain; Melissa Grafe; Nola Hanson; Alex Laviola; Becky Sellinger; Smack Mellon; Socrates Sculpture Park; Top 5 Barbershop; Trans Boxing; & Julie Wolf. © Art21, Inc. 2020. All Rights Reserved.

"New York Close Up" is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; and, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by individual contributors.

#JesFan #Art21 #Art21NewYorkCloseUp

[JES FAN]
Once you've seen them,

they're lodged in your mind.

Especially thinking of them as
one of the first few representations

of the Chinese person as a subject.

There's a medical missionary
called Peter Parker

who traveled to Canton to perform
the surgical incision of tumors

in the early nineteenth century.

Lam Qua was a really celebrated painter
at the time.

He was most famous for painting portraitures.

But I suppose that Lam Qua was also celebrated

by how accurate he can paint his sitters.

He's known for this one quote saying,

"What eye no see, no can do."

There's something about Chinese-ness here.

Thinking, like,
how did Chinese-ness become a word?

What are the technologies that's involved
in creating this idea of "the other"?

Why does the shoulder need to be bare?

Like, the braid of hair is placed.

It's just so seductive,
and I was wondering if that kind of seduction

has to come in a way that you're able to see

the sitter as a fellow human.

["Jes Fan: Infectious Beauty"]

I think it made me really try to understand
the idea of beauty and seduction.

I think my work has a lot to do with seduction.

Nowadays, beauty is really flat.

There's only one emotion you can emote on
social media,

which is the double tap, right?
[LAUGHS]

That there's only a heart shape.

When something is beautiful,
it's just a flat heart.

But then, when you think of
beauty in the past,

it's beauty and the sublime.

It has to come with this suspension--

this fear.

It also meant, in the past,

to describe something that was so beautiful

that it almost makes you want to puke.

[LAUGHS]

Originally, I grew up in Hong Kong.

It's very oppressive, being queer there,

just not being able to see yourself reflected
in society,

nor even within just

being able to see happy, queer adults--

or queer adults in general.

It's kind of not being able to see a future
extension of yourself.

I had a really rough few years growing up,

trying to find who I can be.

[JULIE WOLF]
So my understanding of the piece

is that you make it so that it's a glass shape
of something.

And then, you add the melanin to the piece,

and then fill it with silicon afterwards,
correct?

[FAN]
Yeah.

[WOLF]
What we want to make is melanin.

It's the final physical form that we're going
to make.

This is called L-DOPA.

In this case, L-DOPA is a really
unstable molecule.

If you expose it to light

or ambient temperature,

it will start to do something called autopolymerizing.

It's going to start to make a polymer,

which is a repeated subunit,

which is going to be related to that melanin.

So what we're going to do is to make the conditions

as unstable for L-DOPA as possible,

so that we can bypass the biological process

and just get right to the melanin.

So it's not as dark,

but you can see that
there's the flakes in there.

[FAN]
So crazy that they're warm.

[WOLF]
Yeah.

[FAN]
It would be great to have them...

something that you can identify or trigger,

and sort of hope that is that.

Because the plates you gave me

with the E. coli,

they look exactly like molds.

So let's hope that these will grow happily

and into more slurry-like, you know?

A lot of what I'm trying to do with

what we consider as gendered materials,

or racialized materials,

they're just really, really absurd.

It's like a cooking show.

I have semen,

blood,

melanin,

and pee.

[LAUGHS]

So at the time I was thinking a lot about
how race,

especially in the U.S.,

is seen as infectious.

Think about China and coronavirus.

Think about SARS and being in Hong Kong.

And think about Jim Crow era,
not sharing bodies of water.

That idea of it being infected.

These days in Asia, the beauty is smooth,

has no corners,
does not repulse.

There's something about...

doing this is subverting that balance,

it's showing the labor to acquire that smoothness.

And by showing it,
it looks like these infectious rings.

But then, also the materials
that's carried in these bulbous forms

are actually semen that's decaying.

I find that very funny.

[LAUGHS]

It's very much about
having forms fitting into each other

and somehow evoking a sense of this uncanniness,

but simultaneously so erotic
that you can't stop.

But to be attracted to it,

that eroticness

seduces you.

It's beauty in the gloss,

and the possibility to see your own reflection
in it.

At the same time,

you're actually staring at something that
repulses you,

that actually is considered infectious

or unclean.

My therapist says that I'm so familiar with
oppression

that danger and risk and oppression makes
me feel at home.

So I slave myself away in the studio.

Or, like, I deprive myself of pleasure

because I'm not oppressed
as a queer being here.

[LAUGHS]

So I oppress myself now.
[LAUGHS]

Because I can't go back if I fail.