The artist Jes Fan’s sculptures resist simple classification, and often meld the organic and inorganic; where substances such as hormones, bodily fluids, and mold are inserted into materials like glass and resin. At its essence, Fan’s work is about otherness, highlighting questions surrounding identity, race and gender and exploring their intersections with biology.

The Diagram series originated from the artist’s practice of casting body reliefs from his intimate circle of friends and lovers. Referencing medical models depicting musculature or organs, fragments of these body castings are often conjoined and sanded into abstraction, cradling biomorphic glass forms that insinuate bodily fluids.

Diagram XVII, 2021 is a continuation of this series. Here, a direct cast of the artist’s own knees, duplicated into pairs of three are split into a kneeling position. Through applying, sanding and polishing layers of pigmented resin, the sets of knees crosses into an ambiguous state of materiality, alluding to oceanic life forms or stone.