Candice Lin

A slow forming cloud: Candice Lin + Patrick Staff’s LESBIAN GULLS, DEAD ZONES, SWEAT AND T.

23 May 2017
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Candice Lin and Patrick Staff presented collaborative project LESBIAN GULLS, DEAD ZONES, SWEAT AND T. at Los Angeles’ Human Resources which opened May 4 to the 21, 2017.

A framed wooden structure in a hexagonal layout was placed in the centre of the room; a reference to “the chemical compound of benzene, part of a phyto-hormonal change that occurs during the aromatization of certain plants.”

Candice Lin + Patrick Staff, LESBIAN GULLS, DEAD ZONES, SWEAT AND T. (2017) Installation view. Courtesy the artists + Human Resources, Los Angeles.

An exploration of botanical knowledge and chemistry, the installation became a ‘slow forming cloud’ that proposed both a cross-pollination and infection between “bodies, ecosystems, and institutions.”

Both artists’ practices are concerned with ecology and botany through a queer re-reading, and invite the viewer to “to lose the illusion of their bodily boundaries and float within the influence of a hormonal mist.” Read our interview with Candice Lin to hear more about these ideas.

 
 
 
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Candice Lin @ Gasworks, Sep 21 – Dec 11

20 September 2016

Candice Lin is presenting solo exhibition A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour at London’s Gasworks, opening September 21 and running to December 11.

The show will be the LA-based artist’s first in the UK. It explores histories of slavery and colonialism as it has been shaped by a human attraction to particular colours, tastes, textures and drugs. It focuses on how the desire to wear and consume preceded the will to trade commercial goods and traces the materialist urges at the root of colonial violence.

The artist presents a “low-tech installation”, or system, of tubing, plastic and glass containers, porcelain filters, hot plates, and other hacked household objects (boils, ferments, distills, dyes) and pumps liquid containing colonial trade goods such as cochineal, sugar and tea. Described as a “flayed circulatory system” and ‘fed’ two litres of water each day, the contraption will constantly produce a brownish-red fluid that will be collected in a basin, siphoned off, and congeal in a pool on a marble-like laminate floor in the adjacent gallery.

The organic matter produced echoes histories of trade, “transforming prized, historically-loaded goods into a stain reminiscent of murder, faeces or menstrual blood”.

See the Gasworks website for more details.**

Candice Lin @ Gasworks, Sep 22 – Dec 11
Candice Lin, ‘A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour (work in progress)’ (2016). Courtesy Gasworks, London, UK and the artist.

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