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Dan Lam’s Bizarre Neon-Hued “Dripping Sculptures”

They've been described as looking like strange alien organisms and beautiful, gelatinous blobs - whatever you want to call her works, Dan Lam's bizarre "dripping sculptures" have an undeniable fantasy about them. Brightly colored with pointy, tentacle-like attachments, her work captures that special grotesque beauty that only mother nature could dream up. However, the Manila born, Texas-based artist explains: "My work looks organic because the process of creating it is organic."

They’ve been described as looking like strange alien organisms and beautiful, gelatinous blobs – whatever you want to call her works, Dan Lam’s bizarre “dripping sculptures” have an undeniable fantasy about them. Brightly colored with pointy, tentacle-like attachments, her work captures that special grotesque beauty that only mother nature could dream up. However, the Manila born, Texas-based artist explains: “My work looks organic because the process of creating it is organic.”

Lam first sought out to create art by simply observing the world around her, but her art soon evolved into an exploration of all kinds of mediums and textures. Using materials like polyurethane foam, resin, and acrylic on wood panel, she begins each piece by molding foam and then leaving the material to take on its own shape- after which she paints the piece in neon-hued acrylic paint colors to enhance the form. What started as an expression of her surroundings resulted in something closer to science fiction.

“This current work reflects my continued engagement in ideas of beauty, desire, and disgust – I take cues from nature, food, and the human body. By not directly referencing one thing in particular, I try to create something that addresses both attraction and repulsion, making objects that exist in between. Those ideas drive the work and generate new pieces, but I think process and play informs what I make just as much,” she says.

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