Dan Lam: Squishes, Drip, & Blob Sculptures
- dannawode3
- Jul 11, 2021
- 8 min read
Dan Lam was born in Manila, Philippines at a refugee camp, a stop in her family’s long journey from Vietnam to the US (1). She accredits being an only child to influencing her artistically stating, “All that time alone as a kid helped prepare me to be an adult spending a lot of time alone making stuff. It’s very natural to me. I made a lot of crafty things, like I would melt candles and make things out of wax, and I drew a lot. My mom has the artistic gene, and she would draw my portrait every year. I would build things like box fortresses and live in them. I think sculpture comes more naturally to me, which is ironic because both of my degrees are in drawing and painting (2).” She was raised in Texas where she received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from the University of North Texas in 2010; She received her Masters in Fine Arts in 2014 from Arizona State University. (1) The artist’s work is collected by many, including Miley Cyrus, Lily Aldridge, Gigi Hadid, and the Tisch family (1).
Sculptures
Lam has three types of sculptures: Blobs are anything that goes on the wall, these rotund, rounded forms; Drips are anything that hangs over shelves or pedestals; And Squishes are the freestanding sculptures, they are her newest development (2). Lam strives for all of sculptures to create the illusion of being alive (2).
Media Application
In undergrad, as a painting and drawing major, Lam became really interested in creating a way to leave the canvas through texture (2). Lam was attracted to soft sculpture and droopy, melty aesthetics, and began experimenting with a lot of materials like hot glue, resin, and plaster. After some research Lam began using polyurethane foam, inspired by Lynda Benglis’s work. Polyurethane foam became the perfect media for Lam due to its functionality; it creates the voluptuous drippy look her aesthetic strives for without being too heavy. All her materials have been geared towards finding that drippy look, but in the beginning everything she was using was insanely heavy (2).
Lam must give up a lot of control when working with her chosen media. She is able to guide the process, but factors such as temperature, gravity, and time contribute to the process and are out of her control. Her process of creating becomes a balancing act of knowing when to control the design and when to let go (2).
What does her work convey?
Excess
“These pieces live between the worlds of the beautiful and the ugly, and as I push that idea further, the idea of excess has become really interesting. Covering a piece in Swarovski crystals is decadent; it’s over the top. I relate the crystals to things used in pageantry, like dresses and bikinis covered in crystals. It’s meant to draw attention and make something more eye-catching. Putting crystals on a form that is somewhat grotesque pushes it over the top. There’s this feeling of an over-pouring, the cup-runneth-over idea,” Dan Lam (2). Even without the crystals, the idea of excess is there, because the sculptures are covered so completely with resin. The goopiness, along with glitter, shimmer, and pearls, are all iterations of the same idea (2).
Body Image
“Part of what attracts me to the polyurethane material is that it reminds me of the body. The raw material is kind of an ugly, tan skin color with all these imperfections like pockmarks from little bubbles—it even has what looks like cellulite. It’s very fatty. I’m attracted to that aesthetic, but I also find it kind of gross, so it already embodies this idea. I cover up a lot of those imperfections, so it’s related to how we put clothes on to enhance our form or distract from it. From makeup, to how we do our hair, there are things we adorn ourselves with to make our natural form better or more hidden,” Dan Lam (2). Lam has also been experimenting with silicone, another material she relates to the human body, especially skin (2).
In graduate school Lam had a professor she didn’t really get along with who looked at her work and said, “So, these are really beautiful, but so what?” She knew her work had content, but he couldn’t see past the prettiness, so she started relating her work to the body and even her own personal experience as a female. Lam said, “When you see a person who is insanely beautiful, you almost instinctively won’t think they’re also super smart, which is a kind of social conditioning. So those types of moments, where someone asked, “What else?” really helped push me (2).” Lam is also inspired by celebrity culture, social media, and plastic surgery’s effect on the human form. She indirectly looks for the changing of bodies in synthetic ways to inform her work (2).
Not Psychedelic
A common misconception is that Lam’s work is psychedelic. While she can understand where people get that from, it is not her inspiration. Instead, she sights nature as more of her direct inspiration (2). Lam stated, “What I like about my work is that people see so many different things. Along with the idea of it being so foreign, that psychedelic realm is interesting because it’s also an unknown, a world we don’t fully understand. I do get those questions a lot, but it has to do with the someone’s filter and their own life experience (2).”
Touching her work
Lam says the most consistent reaction to her work is that people want to touch it. Thus, creating an interesting dynamic between the viewer and the art. As in most museum settings you are only allowed to view art, the urge to touch the art then creates an tension between the viewer and the artwork its self. This relationship plays into Lam's goal of having her work feel alive.
In more recent series Lam has been thinking about what it means when someone sees something, and they want to understand it with more than just their eyes (2). This has led here to work with interactive sculpture where the viewer is actually invited to touch and manipulate the form. This allows viewers to engage more dynamically with a work of art and to experience the piece through multiple sense, most notably that of touch which is heightened due to Lam's interest and play with textures. This engagement with touch has also led to a deeper exploration of thermochromic paint. Thermochromic paint is heat sensitive, so when someone touches it, it reacts to them. It’s unexpected because, in the art world, you’re not supposed to touch things. If there are enough bodies in the room, the painted surface will warm up enough to change colors, so even without touching, you can still interact with the sculpture (2).
Color
Lam is known for her bold juxtapositions of color; an ability she says comes from teaching color theory in graduate school, stating that you must understand something fully to teach it (2). Lam uses the Joseph Albers theory of color interactions. In place of systems, Albers developed a method of studying color based on the idea that only by observing color in the push and tug and pull of context can one begin to understand the nature of color (4). Albers’ central thesis is that there are no absolutes in color; the way humans perceive color is influenced by the surrounding context of neighboring colors, lighting conditions, size and quantity, what we look at before and after, and more (5). Two colors can look like one; one color can look like two; what looks dull in one context may look bright in another; reds can look cool-toned; and blues can be warm-toned (5). As Albers says, “This fact makes color the most relative medium in art (5).” Lam says studying color in this way has helped her when she is doing her gradients to create the illusion of movement. She is interested in the vibrating colors, how color sits on a surface, and what it does to the viewer’s eyes (2). Lam says, “There’s just so much information in color. If it’s a primary interest for you, then there are so many iterations you can try. It’s infinitely interesting (2).”
Inspiration for her color choices come from unusual aspects of nature. She said, “As far as colors, I look at coral and all the weird things that you wouldn’t think could happen in nature, like how certain reptiles have a holographic sheen to them. I went to Denver recently and hiked in the mountains where we saw this river with specks of mica or fool’s gold in it; then I realized the water itself had shimmer, tiny specks of iridescence, and I see that same thing when I’m mixing resin and adding some pearlescent interference to it. There’s also coral that’s UV light reactive, and there are deep sea creatures with bizarre patterns. I look at this stuff a lot, and then I just let it sit for a while in my brain, and sometimes it comes out in the work (2).” Lam has also looked at warning colors in nature, the bright colors animals and bugs give off to deter predators, as a form of inspiration (2). Lam’s go to colors are neons. Stating that her most comfortable palette is probably what most people associate with her classic drips; a light blue base with pink and orange spikes, drawing inspiration from the colors of the sky and sunset (2).
Social Media
Lam uses social media to promote her art allowing a larger audience to see her art and for her work to go viral a few times. Her Instagram account is @sopopomo and has over 354K followers. Lam said, “I made my account while in grad school where they often asked where we saw ourselves in the scope of art history. I didn’t know how to answer that, so sopopomo stands for so post-post-modern—whatever that happens to mean in the future (2).” Lam’s advice for fellow artists on social media is to be true to yourself and post what you want stating, “Someone’s going to like your work and want it in their gallery. Don’t base what you do on the amount of likes and views you get (3).”
Video Resources
Art Resin Video Synopsis: (video of her talking at a gallery and small clips of her working in the studio) Lam talks about relying on her intuition as an artist to make her sculpture. She discusses the balancing act between idea and material, beautiful and ugly, and control and freedom. She discusses in depth the different qualities of the material she works with. Lastly, she talks about the power of the artists voice and how creativity means to contently challenge yourself.
60 second Doc Video Synopsis: (interview and images, no in studio work) Lam discusses working large and how her process is all about experimentation of color and material.
Collector House Video Synopsis: (In studio interview and video of her working in her studio) This interview takes a look at Lam's progression as an artists from her work as a painting major in grad school to her current work. Lam explains her three different types of sculptures: dips, blobs, and squishes. She gives a studio tour (she has since moved to a larger studio) and she discusses the process of working with her materials. Lam talks about the incontrollable factors of her process and the different ornamentation she put on her work from spikes to rhinestones. Lastly, she discusses color with the interviewer calling her a master of color.
Conversations with Artists Video Synopsis: (interview with Lam as she sets up an art show, no in studio work) Lam discusses the aesthetics of her work: questioning the definition and depth of beauty, excess, and what the balance is between the beautiful and ugly. Lam talks about the visual tension created when people want to touch her art and the new series she is making where people can interact with her work. She talks about working with untraditional materials in experimental way. Zak and Lam talk about the power of critiquing your work to learn your voice as an artist, to know the narrative of your work, and to defend your process. Lastly, Lam talks about using discomfort as a tool for growth.
References:
Images:
Dan Lam's photo is from the Dallas Observer courtesy of Dan Lam
All sculpture images are from Dan Lam's website https://www.bydanlam.com/
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