Lyric Shen
Biscuit, Mar 11 – Apr 9, 2022

On the way back, we passed many large houses in the woods. Watching through a window frame, as snow is falling at an angle, something on somebody’s large flatscreen television. So…just enough in edges are left white (like the top of a nail with a French manicure). A memory is transferred, more transferred than embedded or synthesized. I’m eustressed picture who carries sensual obligations. Lifting biscuit from river.

Lyric Shen is an artist who works primarily in sculpture and tattoo. They question conventions of semantic mastery to suggest that language itself is unstable. In their compulsory engagement with written, spoken, and even ceramic languages that are refined through extractive culture, they seek an alphabet with a sensual obligation which is linguistically and deliberately unrefined. They rely on trust in the innate value of an object to prevent the overhandling or excessive manipulation of its innocent features; to make a distinction between what can be refused and what must be refused.

In several sculptures such as Paradise, Shen uses a hydrographic printing process to create a dewy picture that barely arrives on its surface, recalling asbestos, cellulose, or a stone marred by seawater. The definition of the applied image in Cat in the Window is further distorted by adhering a smooth print to an irregular substrate. In their conscious misuse or misalignment of the printing process seen in Lanlan and Dish (no title), Shen invites formal blemishes. Blemishes like the purple night ink of a pigment printer on its last print.

Lyric Shen (b. Goleta, California, 1993) lives and works in Detroit and Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include Jupiter Finger, Harkawik (Los Angeles, CA), Terra Firma, Murmurs (Los Angeles, CA), My Wishing Well, Cone Shape Top Center for Arts & Music (Emeryville, CA), Ancestral Recall, 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. Shen is pursuing their MFA at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Biscuit is their first solo exhibition.

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