Dan Lam Flare For Sale

About this work

Flare is among the largest works in Dan Lam's Color Sculptures series, measuring an expansive 17 by 17 by 16 inches — a scale that allows her characteristically energetic material language to unfold with full authority. Created in 2023 using foam, acrylic, polymer, and resin, the sculpture projects outward with kinetic confidence, its form spreading and spiking in multiple directions as though caught in a moment of explosive release. The title captures this perfectly: a flare is light and heat made sudden, visible, and directional. Lam's process involves the careful manipulation of polyurethane foam and polymer to create forms that appear both spontaneous and meticulously controlled — a paradox that lies at the heart of her practice. In Flare, this tension is amplified by the work's scale, which allows the drips, spikes, and surface accretions that define her sculptural vocabulary to register at a more visceral level than in her smaller works. The chromatic range of the Color Sculptures series is fully on display here, with layered acrylic hues building an inner luminosity that shifts with the changing angle of light. The work simultaneously evokes a solar eruption, a rare deep-sea organism, and a hyper-saturated candy confection. Dan Lam is an American sculptor of Vietnamese ancestry whose practice has placed her at the forefront of contemporary tactile sculpture. Her work invites a contradictory response — the desire to touch, to hold, to possess, set against a subtle unease provoked by the organic strangeness of the forms themselves. Exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, Lam's sculptures have attracted significant critical attention and a devoted collector base. Flare exemplifies the ambition and scale of which her practice is capable, standing as a major statement within the Color Sculptures series.