Artist’s studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2024
Youyi Echo Yan (b.2000, Chongqing, China) is a sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BFA in Studio Art at New York University (2024) with a minor in Philosophy. Her practice synthesizes evolutionary biology and eroticism to explore transgressive forces driving physical metamorphosis during the domestication process.
She has recently exhibited her works in a three-person exhibition at Eli Klein Gallery (New York, 2024); and has shown at Zepster Gallery (Brooklyn, 2024); DeCA Foundation (New York, 2024); Light Up Globals Project Space, (New York, 2024); Accent Sisters, (Jersey City, 2024); theBLANC Art Space, (New York, 2023); Sotheby’s Institute of Art, (New York, 2023); LATITUDE Gallery, (New York, 2023); Chambers Fine Art (New York, 2023); Stilllife Art Fair (New York, 2023); Commons Gallery at New York University (New York, 2023); 80WSE Gallery (New York, 2023); Rosenberg Gallery at New York University, (New York, 2023). Yan has received reviews and interviews from Impulse Magazine and White Hot Magazine, and has given talks at New York University’s BFA Alumni panel.
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We are nothing more than the traces of colliding forces.
Synthesizing evolutionary biology and eroticism, Youyi Echo Yan’s work portrays transgressive forces that induce physical metamorphosis during the domestication process. Her works are made from organic materials and readymade objects, shaped like creatures that are stretching, expanding, shattering, and caught in a process of transmutation. Yan also incorporates museological and taxidermy visuals, critiquing humanity's obsession with displaying and altering creatures and objects.
Yan’s practice centers around the idea of domestication. She believes this evolutionary force not only shapes the forms of all existence, but also reflects social structures. In her recent works, she extends the concept of "domestication" to “domesticity,” viewing the creation of furniture as a way to tame surroundings. By mutating and binding found furniture, kitchen utensils, and other household tools into organic forms, she questions whether utility is a necessary prerequisite for life.
The artist makes sculptures in a way that is simultaneously sadistic and nurturing. She violently chisels rigid lumber into biomorphic forms, then coats it in resin that resembles bodily fluids. Recently, Yan has begun carefully scraping away portions of the resin to reveal the raw wood beneath. This act of excavation mirrors the archaeological process, unveiling layers of the past. At last, she binds found household objects with her wood carvings, as if enacting a form of selective breeding. These assemblages bear traces of taming and resistance, fragments of intimate narratives that are re-imagined into new forms through a process of domestication.
For Yan, sculpture is irreplaceable in its ability to embody force. Evolution and domestication, as she sees it, are collisions of forces. The alteration of form results from external forces of alienation. Power may manifest directly, whilst it may also operate more subtly in reciprocal relationships. Yan explores dominance and submission by materializing these forces through forms such as the pulling of an umbilical cord, suggestive strokes of the tail, or the penetration of dinnerware. The supple flexibility of wire and silicone grapples with the rigidity of metal and wood. In these works, opposing forces achieve a precarious balance, seeming resolved but never fully canceling one another out.
Her sculptures invite the home-bred humans to reflect on their primal lust, corporal fragility, and the paradoxical nature of the forces residing within them.
Jan.2025