Endnotes¹


Ivory Fu
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    Artwork

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    1) Hard to Swaddle (2022), aluminum, steel screws, rayon fabric, thread, oil paint on canvas
    2) Homecoming (2022), rock, steel, driftwood, screws
    3) Buns’ Out! (2022), oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas
    4) Fortune Has Arrived, or 福到了/福倒了 (2022), oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas
    5) I’m Comin’ Out by Diana Ross (2022), steel, clay, rope, thread
    6) Mother Knows Best, or 世上只有媽媽好 (2022), styrofoam, wood, driftwood, acrylic paint, rayon fabric, grass, fake grass, black thread, steel rod

    Statement I don’t apologize for saying things directly. I just care about you. And I care deeply about the people in my life, because their tears challenge me and their hugs are tender. They even allow me to get bored of them sometimes, and that’s a grace that we share, an understanding that we are understood and will return to each other. My art is about them, and by reflection, me and you. My studio practice is sustainable because my rage, happiness, gratitude, confusion, and their cycles keep me grounded. I joke about being a nihilist. But I’m just masochistic, only in a selfish, not self-sacrificial, way. I push to the boiling point so I can live longer. I’ve embraced the fact that I dwell: I throw things into chaos but draw them back and dissect how that whole mess made me feel. My art is queer and colorful. I had been fighting the colors for too long, and I’m glad I can now see them against these pockmarked white gallery walls and be proud of my (mostly) non-restraint. I like to get political, because I care about the personal, and I don’t want people to dictate the way you move through the world. I’ve been told that I have a large appetite. I see it as having a short attention span. You can decide which frame you prefer! A tl;dr list of influences would be: Ann Hamilton, Elle Perez, Pierre Bonnard, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Reverend Goddess Magora Kennedy, Cole Lu, Egon Schiele, Giacometti, Ernesto Neto, Eikoh Hosoe and everyone else in my archive of artists and thinkers. The bottom line is, we don’t have the luxury of shame. I’ve moved beyond hyperrealistic, explicitly-biological works, but I still relate to the body: yours and mine. I’m talking about queerness, intergenerational trauma, identity formation, denial, binding as restrictive and (gender-, medically-) affirming, family, honest and dishonest hugs, and suffocating maternal love. I want to draw us closer through figurative forms and trippy paint.

    Student

    feels, thinking, pieces, painting, rope, sculptural, tension, talking, brother, driftwood, restriction, materials, lighting, agree, pillow, holding, references, nice, circle
    “Yeah, this is my brother. When I went back home for my knee surgery, I was thinking a lot about bodies and disability already. And then when I got home, he had gotten into a huge fight for my mom about coming out as trans. And, you know, me being crippled, kind of like in the bed and having to listen to them fight and their tears and having talked to them individually. I was thinking a lot about family, and bondage and restrictions.”
    “I changed my subject matter because, you know, being in a studio during COVID times, pandemic times, like it's, it's hard to find something to keep you going and to keep you really rooted in studio. I felt very uncomfortable here. I want to go home. I want to sleep. But choosing subject matter that I was very deeply invested in – people root me so I think this was a good choice for me.
    “This is my knee brace I wore for you know, two, three months. Over there are some of the pads, and if you see that little dejected alleyway I have a metal piece and some of the pads over there. My crutches over there too. I think I was thinking about the black of these actually, and I'm not sure if I switch it out for something more natural would it completely lose that effect of reference to like a medical device or you know, medical restriction? I'll think about it.”
    “I'm a double major in art and biology. So what that means is I do a lot of dissections and I do a lot of lab work and it kind of informs my art."
    “Doing a senior thesis was really intimidating, because it's such a structured thing. And you have to produce a thing by the end. Like, if you don't make a thing that's like resonant. And it feels like an opportunity wasted, and I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to push myself out of my comfort zones and stay away from realism, and then go into more abstraction. But like looking at the materials around me, and I'm looking at when I'm most productive and happy with my art, it's when I'm really emotional. So like really angry, or really sad, really isolated, and like mulling in these emotions.”
    Endnotes¹

    Ivory Fu
  • *
    •

    Artwork

  • 1
    •
  • 2
    •
  • 3
    •
  • 4
    •
  • 5
    •
  • 6
    •
    1) Hard to Swaddle (2022), aluminum, steel screws, rayon fabric, thread, oil paint on canvas
    2) Homecoming (2022), rock, steel, driftwood, screws
    3) Buns’ Out! (2022), oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas
    4) Fortune Has Arrived, or 福到了/福倒了 (2022), oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas
    5) I’m Comin’ Out by Diana Ross (2022), steel, clay, rope, thread
    6) Mother Knows Best, or 世上只有媽媽好 (2022), styrofoam, wood, driftwood, acrylic paint, rayon fabric, grass, fake grass, black thread, steel rod

    Statement I don’t apologize for saying things directly. I just care about you. And I care deeply about the people in my life, because their tears challenge me and their hugs are tender. They even allow me to get bored of them sometimes, and that’s a grace that we share, an understanding that we are understood and will return to each other. My art is about them, and by reflection, me and you. My studio practice is sustainable because my rage, happiness, gratitude, confusion, and their cycles keep me grounded. I joke about being a nihilist. But I’m just masochistic, only in a selfish, not self-sacrificial, way. I push to the boiling point so I can live longer. I’ve embraced the fact that I dwell: I throw things into chaos but draw them back and dissect how that whole mess made me feel. My art is queer and colorful. I had been fighting the colors for too long, and I’m glad I can now see them against these pockmarked white gallery walls and be proud of my (mostly) non-restraint. I like to get political, because I care about the personal, and I don’t want people to dictate the way you move through the world. I’ve been told that I have a large appetite. I see it as having a short attention span. You can decide which frame you prefer! A tl;dr list of influences would be: Ann Hamilton, Elle Perez, Pierre Bonnard, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Reverend Goddess Magora Kennedy, Cole Lu, Egon Schiele, Giacometti, Ernesto Neto, Eikoh Hosoe and everyone else in my archive of artists and thinkers. The bottom line is, we don’t have the luxury of shame. I’ve moved beyond hyperrealistic, explicitly-biological works, but I still relate to the body: yours and mine. I’m talking about queerness, intergenerational trauma, identity formation, denial, binding as restrictive and (gender-, medically-) affirming, family, honest and dishonest hugs, and suffocating maternal love. I want to draw us closer through figurative forms and trippy paint.

    Student