Meet Siyuan Tan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Siyuan Tan.

Siyuan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My hometown is located in a city in Northeastern China famous for coal production. Since I was young, I have known there were people mining coal under the city, and I have always tried to imagine that space – invisible but present. Gradually, I realized that spaces could be divided. My father passed away when I was in high school. Chinese people believe that the soul of the deceased will come back home on the seventh day of death to bid farewell, so family members should prepare the person’s favorite meals to see him/her off. We did the same for my Dad. Strangely, after midnight on that day, I noticed the tableware prepared for my father showed signs of being moved, which made me believe he was still here, but it was only the space he used to live in with us together had changed.

I majored in sculpture in college. I found that the process of making a mold for a sculpture transformed the volume that once occupied by a real space was then a nihilistic space. For example, like folded hands, there’s a
space in the middle, but if you open your hands, this space will disappear. Once existed but no longer does, this space, made by a real surface and the nihility of the inner space. These experiences got me interested in real space and empty space. I believe the exploration is rooted in human instinct.

Has it been a smooth road?
Even though there are difficulties, I remain positive. The biggest difficulty in this process is how to integrate my life experience and my concept into the works. The biggest difficulty is to challenge their one’s own limits.
When I relax, or I am satisfied, my work won’t improve. When I first came to the United States, I lived on a friend’s sofa and often had only one meal a day. Those are easy to overcome, the most difficult still is to overcome my own limitation. It is not easy, but I am lucky to get many people’s help, I am very grateful to my family, they are so supportive. They gave me a lot of encouragement and confidence. And many curators have allowed me to participate in exhibitions, I’ve shown my works with many artists. My professors and friends also gave me a lot of advice.

Please tell us more about what you do, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I earned my B.F.A. in Sculpture from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, China and M A. in Sculpture from Savannah College of Art and Design. Now, I work as an artist in Atlanta and New York. I previously worked at ID3 Group as Sculpture Studio leader, then I went to Detroit to work for Ford Motor Company as a Clay Modeler. The various working experiences have exposed me to a variety of materials for art and industrial fabrication, which thus led to my usage of media like spray paint in his paintings and sculptures. I have participated in group exhibitions internationally including Beijing, China; Rome, Italy; Landshut, Germany; Aveiro, Portugal; New York and Atlanta, U.S.A. Recent exhibitions include Face-Off (solo exhibition), Fou Gallery, New York (2019); 4th Wall Power, Time Museum, Beijing (2019); KUNST IM DIALOGUE/Migration, Stichting White Cube Global Village, Landshut, Germany (2018); SABA IV, Delaware Contemporary Museum, Wilmington (2018) and Tan Siyuan: How Much I Love You, Trios Gallery, Atlanta (2017). My work utilizes tangible media and forms to explore tensions between two coexisting but “opposing” spaces.

The idea is derived from both my cultural and academic background. I was raised in Liaoning Province, Northeast China, which is famous for its coal mining industry. My experience growing up, including childhood memories of a deceased parent’s spirit, made me aware of the imaginative space that co-exists, intertwines, and sometimes conflicts with the physical space I occupy. My practice as a sculptor further deepened my understanding of these two spaces, which my describe as a virtual, “nihilistic space” that transforms into the visible—the physical and concrete form that arises during the process of making molds. Through this experience, I found that the ensemble of tangible forms bore a vivid resemblance to the abstract relationships between virtual and physical spaces or, in a broader sense, between two confrontational forces.

Contact Info:

• Website: tansiyuan.com
• Phone: 4046802658
• Email: tansiyuan8877@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siyuan_tan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009923478974

Image Credit:
Photo by: Peichao Lin @ Siyuan Tan, Fou Gallery

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