Lyric Shen: Promise’s Room

Working primarily in tattoo and sculpture, Lyric Shen’s practice involves a piercing awareness that covers skin and objects alike. Hand-built ceramics, metal petals, found objects and a video hold images of past times, sharp yet unrefined. Through Shen’s chosen technique of water transfers, hard objects must surrender to the membrane-thin sheet of ink, dipping their bodies in glimpses of memories. Bound together through a deliberate lack of precision, shapes shift through offset boundaries and images distort, like memory itself, warped by the passing of time.

As the accuracy of images dissolves into the evanescence of the moment, Shen alludes to the fragility of
life itself: a ray of light that briefly floods the eye; the mossy scent of trees in a grotto; the misty morning light outside the kitchen window. In glances taken from their own life spent in Michigan, Mexico and California, their practice not only reflects their personal life but the cultural and industrial circumstances surrounding them.

Shen’s use of mediums combines ancient crafts like tattoo, handmade ceramic and metal work with highly industrialized techniques like plasma cutting, inkjet printing and everyday technologies like iPhone photos and videos. Crossing languages, regions and cultures in their various modes of making, Shen’s delicate sculptures show us the gentle beauty of transgression that takes shape only when in flux.

Lyric Shen (b. Goleta, California, 1993) lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. In 2022 Shen had a solo exhibition at Canada (NYC) and has recently been included in several group exhibitions, among them ‘Reciprocity’ at Marinaro (NYC), ‘Jupiter Finger’ at Harkawik (Los Angeles, CA), ‘Terra Firma’ at Murmurs (Los Angeles, CA), ‘My Wishing Well’, Cone Shape Top Center for Arts & Music (Emeryville, CA), ‘Ancestral Recall’ at The dA Center for the Arts (Pomona, CA), and Taiwan Artist Village (Taipei City, Taipei). Their work is in the permanent collections of the University of California and Santa Barbara Arts & Music Library. Their writing and work have been featured in Cultured Mag and Hyperallergic as well as in collective DIY editions such as All Sex Workers Go to Heaven and a forthcoming anthology with Other Weapons Distribution.