Art that looks so good you can eat it. That's what I think of when I see the works of Dan Lam, the artist whose "organic sculptures" seems to almost melt off a gallery shelf, as if alive. Her newest exhibition, Sweetmeats, her third solo at Hashimoto Contemporary (this particular solo show at the San Francisco space), sees Lam continue to explore resin materials and detailed marks that make each work extremely unique.
The Texas-based Lam even says of Sweetmeats that she wanted to "spend more time with each mark" within the works, which you can often see in her IG process posts. As the gallery notes, "New glazing and finishing techniques create new depths and riots of color, adding to the ever present sense of experimentation, curiosity and play within her work." And yet, as Lam as told us in the past, her inspirations range from nature to psychedelics, even as her process has synthetic elements. "... nature is more of my direct inspiration.," Lam told us in Juxtapoz years ago. "Psychedelics have definitely influenced my life, and 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. If they’ve done a lot of drugs, they might say the sculptures look like something you’d want to see while on shrooms."
Hashimoto will host an exhibition walk-through and artist Q&A on Saturday, August 29th at 3pm Pacific time, via the Hashimoto Instagram account.
