JES FAN AT YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

The gallery is pleased to announce Unbounded, the first institutional exhibition in the US by artist Jes Fan (born 1990 Toronto; raised in Hong Kong; lives and works in New York) .

One of today’s leading artists, Fan makes sculptures that combine elegant abstract forms with an experimental and innovative approach to materials to explore the porousness of identity. Jes Fan: Unbounded focuses on works from the first decade of Fan’s career, showcasing the artist’s use of processes like glassblowing and 3D printing and materials such as resin, silicone, and biological substances. Fan’s way of conceptualizing the world has been shaped by their experience growing up in Hong Kong, both before and after its handover from Britain to China—a geographical and metaphorical crossroads of East and West, ancient and modern, colonial and postcolonial. Fan’s art challenges such binary terms, encouraging us to question inherited assumptions and consider a new way of looking at the world.

In celebration of the opening of of Jes Fan: Unbounded, on February 26, from 5:30-6:30pm the artist will be joined in conversation by Rachel C. Lee, Professor of English and Gender Studies at UCLA, and Margaret Ewing, the Gallery’s Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Together, they discuss Fan’s groundbreaking work in sculpture—its innovations in materials and processes and use of abstract form to explore themes such as the limits of binary categorization, the regenerative strategies of nonhuman species in response to external threats, and the potential for interspecies collaboration.