In Continuous Fractures Generating New Yields, CFGNY houses eight porcelain works and one soft sculpture in an architectural structure comprised of common construction materials. With its translucent walls and strategically placed apertures and mirrors, the structure renders the audience’s access to the sculptures partial and relational, revealing shifting perspectives of the works as one moves around it.

Cast from the negative space in an arrangement of household objects, these porcelain sculptures juxtapose the textures of cheap goods presumed to be manufactured in China with the smooth, delicate surfaces of “fine China” – and, by extension, with qualities often ascribed to Asian skin. Addressing the long arc of western trade relationships with China, CFGNY points in these works to a “vaguely Asian” subjectivity, imprinted by the exotic collectability of Ming vases; the economy, convenience and disposability of Chinese-made wares; and anxieties in North America about overseas Chinese labour.

Documenting provisional relationships, the unwieldy sculptures require three members of CFGNY working simultaneously to execute, and incur significant cracking and shattering in the firing process, necessitating mending that is left visible. Working from two moulds that together comprise the full arrangement of household objects, the eight porcelains are cast in pairs, presented here in varying configurations. Housed in a makeshift structure that offers neither transparency nor opacity, these works reflect CFGNY’s ongoing engagement with Asianness as a subjectivity constructed and revealed in relation.  
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The soft sculpture Family Member, LXXX invokes the aesthetics of cuteness employed by many Asian cultural exports. Taking the form of a centipede, Family Member, LXXX is a multi-part stuffed animal, a collective body comprised of disparate parts. A counterpoint to the porcelains, the sculpture dwells inconspicuously in the underlayer of the structure, embodying CFGNY’s interest in the handmade and the queer.