OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2026
5-8 PM

ON VIEW
SEPTEMBER 18 - OCTOBER 17, 2026

FOR INQUIRES
Please contact hello@chefasprojects.com

Chefas Projects is pleased to present Mercurial, a new solo exhibition by sculptural artist Dan Lam, on view September 18 through October 17, 2026. Bringing together more than twenty new works, the exhibition introduces a heightened metallic sensibility to Lam’s singular sculptural language, with surfaces that suggest chrome, liquid metal, and something less readily identifiable-objects caught somewhere between matter and mutation.

Known for sculptures that occupy an uncanny space between the organic and the artificial, Lam approaches form as something fluid, seductive, and alive. In Mercurial, this sensibility takes on a distinctly reflective character. Metallic hues course across the surfaces of the works, emphasizing their bulbous contours, dripping edges, and seemingly unstable forms. Chrome-like finishes catch and distort their surroundings, allowing the sculptures to shift with changes in light, perspective, and proximity.

The works appear to ooze, pool, drip, and swell. Their surfaces suggest viscosity while their forms remain resolutely sculptural, creating an intriguing contradiction between solidity and liquidity. They seem less like objects that have been made than organisms in the midst of becoming - alien, tactile, and strangely familiar.

This tension is fundamental to Lam’s practice. Her sculptures consistently operate between opposing states: attraction and repulsion, organic and inanimate, soft and hard, seriousness and play. Rather than resolving these contradictions, Lam uses them as points of departure. The resulting forms possess an uncanny immediacy, inviting viewers to move closer even as their unfamiliarity introduces a note of hesitation.

In Mercurial, the reflective surfaces intensify this exchange between object and viewer. The sculptures absorb fragments of their environments and return them altered, making the surrounding space part of the work. What initially reads as an autonomous object becomes something more relational-a form that changes depending on where it is encountered and how it is seen.

Despite their otherworldly appearance, Lam’s sculptures remain remarkably approachable. Playfulness is central to their charge. The works resist the distance sometimes associated with contemporary sculpture, instead engaging the viewer through color, surface, scale, and a visceral sense of recognition. They are strange without being alienating; experimental without abandoning the pleasures of looking.

The title Mercurial evokes both the mutable nature of the works and their affinity with mercury: a substance defined by its fluidity, reflectivity, and ability to transform its appearance in relation to its surroundings. Here, Lam translates those qualities into sculptural form. Her objects appear perpetually in motion, suspended between states, as though their final form has not yet been decided.

Across more than twenty new sculptures, Mercurial expands Lam’s investigation of the space between the familiar and the unknown. The works activate the imagination through an intuitive visual language - one based not on representation but on sensation. Their exaggerated forms, seductive surfaces, and ambiguous materiality encourage viewers to project, imagine, and participate.

In Lam’s hands, sculpture becomes less a fixed thing than an encounter: part organism, part object, part fantasy. Mercurial embraces that instability, presenting a body of work that is at once polished and unruly, seductive and strange, playful and profound.

ARTWORK

INSTALLATION IMAGES

© CHEFAS PROJECTS
Photo credit: Mario Gallucci