Dan Lam’s Trippy, Drippy Sculptures Ooze Otherworldliness

From her Dallas studio, artist Dan Lam works on a collection of fantastical shiny, sparkly, neon squishes, drips and blob sculptures creating masterful pieces that can only be described as otherworldly. Whether dripping from shelves, freestanding, or mounted on walls, Lam’s art is truly unpredictable. “Since college and graduate school I’ve always been fascinated with working with materials and pushing the boundaries of different types of matter and their properties,” Lam says. She further shares with RH how her journey began in this medium, the question that pushed her to think bigger, the process of working with complex materials, and the continuing evolution of her art.

 

 

The Beginning

Philippines-born, but raised in Texas, Lam always loved contrast and juxtaposition—creating, drawing, and painting, especially in the abstract. She attributes some of her talents from her mother, a refugee from Vietnam who was eventually sponsored to come to the U.S. when Lam was an infant. She recalls, “My mother worked in a small business that handpainted baby clothes. As a child, I remember going to my mother’s job and watching her meticulously paint tiny pieces of clothing by hand; it was beautiful. So, I think creativity runs in my family.”

 

As she grew, Lam became intrigued with the definition of paint. “I began to look at the paint that drips off the canvas, and started questioning the nature of painting itself—the actual categorizing of it. I’d look at a painted wall sculpture, but see it as a sculptural painting. I was also interested in the texture and actual layers of paint that created the final product, more than the painting itself.”

The Question That Pushed Lam to Think Bigger

 While studying art during college and graduate school, Lam discovered her love of working with materials and exploring their properties. She began pushing the mechanical boundaries of different types of resin (polyurethane) resulting in gorgeous, notable sculptures. Her end-of-year projects garnered positive feedback from most of her professors. However, Lam also faced a reoccurring question: “Many professors were supportive of my work, but there were others who continually said, ‘Your sculptures are beautiful, but what else?’” The question, what else, haunted Lam throughout her studies prompting her to reflect on her work and its content. Then something clicked, “I started thinking–just because my work is beautiful or decorative doesn’t mean it lacks content. I began exploring the human element of beauty and questioning the whole meaning of aesthetics.”

 

After graduate school, Lam scaled down the size of her sculptural paintings into wall blobs, drips, and squishes. Her first drippy sculpture was a major turning point in her career. “In 2015 I made my first drip, and it was a revelation because at that point I had figured out the complexities of polyurethane foam to create the drip formation. I understood the properties enough that I knew I could make this exciting thing happen and everything blossomed from there.”

By continuing to challenge the notion of beauty on multiple levels, Lam’s work expanded even further as an ongoing exploration with the ideas of desire, beauty, and repulsion. “I take cues from nature, food, and the human body. I try to create something that addresses both attraction and repulsion, making objects that exist in between–it drives the work I do.”

The Sculptural Process

Lam begins with a loose idea of the sculpture’s physical structure after the polyurethane foam is poured on top of a metal framework. From there, she allows the flow of the materials guide her process. In this space, the unpredictable nature of the foam produces bizarre, gelatinous, organic formations creating drippy, squishy or blob-like deposits as it settles. From this point, Lam adds different media including layers of acrylic paint, wood, foam, and resin.

Bold washes of color, spiky skin and glittery finishes cover her sculptures, both attracting and repelling viewers – allowing an interactive experience on many levels, “I really enjoy that space between viewers wanting to touch some sculptures in my galleries and not being allowed to. It’s that moment in between that fascinates me. I also enjoy what happens when they do interact with a sculpture, when they hold and play with it–during this tactile experience I wonder, ‘What does that art object become?’”

Future Work

Art is often viewed as an examination of a person’s relationship with the world and themselves. In Dan Lam’s case, her sculptural paintings are more about the experiences between the viewer and the art. This unique process keeps Lam experimenting and pushing boundaries with textures and platforms, including social media. “In my galleries, I love witnessing the different types of interaction with my work–but now I’m exploring how the viewer reacts to my sculptures in the digital space–especially on Instagram. The desire to touch my work is still there, but [viewers] are even further removed from it. It’s so interesting that this reaction is still happening digitally. Through social media, I have a more direct dialogue with the viewer and my work is evolving towards this new interaction.”

Currently, Lam is working with a new thermochromic paint that changes color according to temperature or touch. Continuing to play with the idea of the experience of the viewer, Lam states, “I have these new thermochromatic sculptures in a room where the viewer can not touch them. However, as more people enter the room the pieces are activated by the increase in temperature and begin to change color–so again, the viewer is having a direct experience with the object without even touching it.” Lam sees herself making more installation-type pieces in the future to further explore the viewer’s interaction with her sculptural paintings on multiple levels.

See more of Dan Lam’s work and upcoming shows at bydanlam.com.