How Jes Fan Is Staging a Phenomenology of Bodies in Continuous Transformation at Andrew Kreps
Working at the intersection of biology and identity, New York and Hong Kong-based artist Jes Fan has been questioning the penetrability of boundaries between bodies and entities. While investigating systems of relations and interdependencies, Fan challenges viewers to rethink the porous membranes separating us from the world. These heady themes take center stage in Fan’s latest show at the 55 Walker space jointly operated by Andrew Kreps (who represents the artist), kaufmann repetto and Bortolami. Earlier this month, Observer sat down with Fan to discuss his experimental use of materials to test and prove notions of fluid intercorporeality and interspecies parallels.
Titled “Sites of Wounding: Interchapter,” the exhibition ventures boldly into the liminal spaces between corporeal and architectural membranes, examining the networks of connection that ripple through biological and societal systems. Fan’s thoughtfully staged installations and multimedia interventions create material metaphors for the filters, surfaces and membranes that mold our interaction with the world. These malleable constructs explore identity, biology and ecology, inviting viewers to grapple with the shifting ways we relate to other beings and to the environments we inhabit.
With this show, Fan has conjured a phenomenology of bodies that embraces a dazzlingly complex and hybrid multiperspective. His work delves into how corporeal entities are experienced, perceived and understood, treating the body as both a subject and an object of experience. He transcends cultural, racial and even species-based identification, presenting the body as an indispensable piece of a fluid ecosystem—a player in an endless cycle of mutual exchanges that underpin survival while constantly forcing new transformations and adaptations.
A striking installation greets us as we enter the space: a pool of boiling soy milk serves as a projection surface for a visceral video of a homemade endoscopy. As the milk congeals into a skin-like membrane, this intriguing piece offers up a hauntingly sensual encounter, turning the body inside out to envision a fluid corporality, unveiling it as a site of continuous transformations inhabited by myriad other microscopic beings. A dried soy milk membrane is a delicate barrier that simultaneously invites penetration and projects a protective resistance, setting a tone of tension and ambiguity for what lies ahead. The gallery becomes a laboratory of excavation and experimentation, where materials are tested for their capacity to embody, repel or absorb other entities, creating a metaphorical exploration of the physical and psychological processes that shape human interaction with the world.
In the first room, Fan presents a series of sculptural works inspired by Hong Kong’s native Agarwood trees. The artist is captivated by how these trees respond to stress and trauma—producing a fragrant resin that hardens around wounds as part of their healing process. This resin results in intricate surface textures, transforming the trees’ scars into striking patterns that embody both injury and resilience. Fan mirrors this process in his work, incorporating 3D prints and CT scans of his own musculature, drawing a poignant parallel between plant and human responses to wounds. These abstract patterns echo the body’s ability to recover, building new structures atop scars and trauma. This series expands on themes Fan first explored at the Whitney Biennial, delving into the permeability of bodies and the instability of identity. In his vision, sites of wounding become dynamic arenas for testing resilience—places where trauma is absorbed, transformed and ultimately marked as part of a continuous healing cycle.
In the same room, a cast of Fan’s partner’s torso emerges as an irregularly shaped cavity carved into the wall, its surface transformed into something plastic, malleable and fluid—ready to adapt and accommodate external presences. “I positioned it right through the slip of the entrance, so the visitors have this impression of entering that membrane and then encounter this trace left by someone of their passage,” Fan told Observer. Here, the artist once again dives into the phenomenology of the body—not only existing in space but dynamically inhabiting it, acquiring meaning, and evolving through its contextual interactions. The cavity houses cellular blown-glass sculptures, nestled within like parasitic presences or osmotic organs, blending into the installation’s exploration of permeability and transformation.
Fan’s work resists easy metaphors, operating instead in a space of tactile and emotional resonance. “It’s not to allude to an object, but to like a state of feeling,” Fan said. “They evoke something slippery, the feeling of being in flux or transition, in the cusp of change and transformation.” This sense of fluidity extends to the site-specific wall installation, which Fan describes as an effort to “think about architecturally a surface as penetrable.”
The first room appears animated by an almost restless desire to dissolve the boundary between the external body and its internal spaces. Fan’s exploration extends beyond the human, delving into intraspecies relationships and the shared corporeal characteristics between humans and other organisms. “I really see sculpture as a way of thinking through materials,” Fan explained, describing his practice as an investigation into the ways everything is on the cusp of potential transformation.
As we step into the next room, the narrative shifts, taking on a more unsettling tone. Rusting metal structures suspend viscous veils of an unidentified substance, eerily resembling human skin that has melted or sloughed off. These veils, already yellowing as if in a process of decay or rooting, evoke disturbing connections to the racialization of Asian skin and the weight of historical discrimination. The geometry of the supporting structures—a rigid scaffolding that fails to contain these fluid, shifting forms—symbolizes the limits of language. Here, Fan subtly critiques how systems of symbols and definitions attempt to impose order on a reality that refuses to conform, a reality perpetually evolving and transforming. Overall, the artist’s work in this room embraces the formless, relinquishing the illusion of control in favor of chaotic fluidity. It’s a surrender to the generative possibilities of instability and flux, a defiant rejection of the idea that anything—bodies, identities or organisms—can be neatly categorized.
Continuing his methodology of “queering” materials and their properties, Jes Fan’s works in the second room are the culmination of relentless experimentation with soy milk and its derivatives. The “skins” draped from rusting metal structures are once again crafted from condensed soy milk, dried and treated by the artist to achieve a solid, skin-like texture. Echoing the work at the entrance, these hanging forms evoke the act of shedding and adapting—an endless cycle of transformation and survival in response to new environments. The metal frameworks, simultaneously restrictive and supportive, create a palpable tension between fragility and resilience. They cradle these epidermal presences, granting them both a physical and metaphorical place within the space.
Scattered across the floor, Fan has placed capsuled soybeans, artificially severed from their natural biological cycle. These isolated forms suggest impermeability and durability, yet their resilience is the result of drastic manipulation. As Fan explained, soybeans have undergone thousands of transformations, evolving to withstand threats—but this resilience comes at a cost. Intensive anthropogenic interventions have accelerated their adaptation, fundamentally disrupting their original biological essence. The capsules, sealed and inert, prevent the soybeans from engaging in any fluid or natural transformations, leaving them stuck in a state of artificial stasis. “It’s no longer just an organism; it’s a machine,” Fan remarked, pointing to how integrated technologies have irrevocably altered these organic bodies.
A suite of drawings further exploring the parallels between the arboreal and human body rounds out the show. Delicate threads of roots and wood burls trace patterns that resemble arterial systems, suggesting a network of connection that links all living beings. These drawings evoke a continuous, interdependent exchange of vital substances—an intricate dance essential for survival.
Through this exhibition, artist Jes Fan’s experimental approach to materiality reveals profound connections between the properties and behaviors of organic and artificial membranes. By unraveling these similarities, he interrogates the systems of mediation and interrelation that have emerged—systems that often disrupt the organic, osmotic interdependence between entities. Extending his exploration to the relationship between the human body and other organisms, Fan broadens the scope of his artistic and philosophical inquiry. His works encourage a shift from individual human experience toward an interspecies, ecological and ethical perspective, inviting viewers to rethink their place in a larger, interconnected ecosystem.
Jes Fan’s “Sites of Wounding: Interchapter” is on view at Andrew Kreps at 55 Walker in New York through December 21.