Juxtapoz Magazine – Personal Legend: Dan Lam @ Stephanie Chefas Projects, Portland

Stephanie Chefas Projects is delighted to welcome sculptor and painter Dan Lam with Personal Legend, the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery. Lam demonstrates a bold and brilliant evolution with her latest collection of vibrant sculptures. Never before have these singular pieces imparted such palpable texture and visual force as they do here, taking on a kinetic and life-like dimension. This is the artist’s imagination unbound and it inspires endless creativity in turn.

Overlapping bubbles reveal subtle detailing against colorful backdrops and generate a hallucinogenic effect. Globular embryos perch within their translucent shells. Wax-like sculptures loom like cavernous monsters on the verge of consuming their prey. Complex and multi-parted wall pieces take on the appearance of alien clouds in motion. These are just a handful of the wonders in store for the viewer as they migrate from one work to the next, gaining further access to an alternate world of Lam’s own creation.

Dan Lam (b. 1988) is an American sculptor of Vietnamese ancestry, best known for her ‘drippy’ sculptures and vibrant color palette. Using non-traditional materials of polyurethane foam, acrylic paint, and epoxy resin, her finished work often dangles over shelf ledges, contrasting emotions of desire and disgust. Lam earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas and Arizona State University, respectively. As a graduate student, one professor challenged her for making things “too pretty”, which inspired her to explore concepts of excessive beauty.