Ethan Chan is a hoarder. He its it. He even goes so far to say that he thinks hoarders get a bad rap.
“I feel like that’s a very important mentality to have,” Chan said. “I’ve always thought that the best artists were hoarders to some degree.”
It’s easy to see what he means. The items, trinkets and the everyday objects that he collects will find their way into his work, resulting in fun and fantastical installation works that have been popping up in galleries all over town.
Take, for example, “Plastic Sun,” one of the first installation pieces Chan made while still attending Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU).
It’s a large, spherical piece made up of hundreds of the type of small, plastic toys that come with kids meals at fast food restaurants. The resulting cluster of renewed and repurposed toys was threaded within thin twine and hung from the ceiling so it resembled a sort of ornamental star, majestic and multicolored. Most of the toys used for the piece had been collected by Chan himself from every country he’s lived in or visited.
“That was probably one of the only successful times where I’ve held onto stuff that actually became something,” said Chan, explaining that he’d been collecting the toys for the piece since he was a child, living both in Kenosha, Wis., with his mother, and in Manila, Philippines, with his father.
“I do sometimes feel as if I’m never done with them,” he said, adding that he enlarged the piece a few years later, and rechristened it “China, Revisited.”
It would be fair to categorize Chan as something of a multidisciplinary artist at this point, blending sculptural, fabric, fashion and installation art practices. In a few instances, he has even incorporated performances, like the 2021 piece “Not Your Country,” which saw him chewing bubble gum at the Keller Gallery at PLNU and then using the chewed-up pieces to construct racist phrases that he had been called. And while one might be tempted to categorize his work as conceptual in nature, he’s quick to point out that he never goes into a project with an agenda.
“I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of contemporary art — the conversation and the dialogue that comes out of it,” Chan said. “I enjoy that much more than the process or the motive.”
His process can be quite interesting.
Probably his most notable works are suits, costumes and clothing pieces fabricated from single-serving sauce packets. This practice began in 2020 when he was living with other college-aged men in an apartment where fast food was a staple of their diet. They began saving their extra sauce packets with a plan to give them as a wedding gift to a friend, as a prank. After the friend rejected the gift, Chan decided to make a Santa Claus costume entirely constructed from ketchup, soy sauce, mustard and malt vinegar packets.
“I wanted to make a fat suit out of literal fat,” said Chan, who later constructed Darth Vader and Cowboy costume using other packets.
“It was kind of my big break and led to my first show with Quint Gallery. I feel like a lot of the really fun ideas I’ve had, some of my favorite work, have been spur-of-the-moment stuff like that.”
That break led to solo and group exhibitions at Quint Gallery: ONE space in Logan Heights and the Oceanside Museum of Art. Seeing Chan’s work in-person, a viewer could dually see something playful, just as they may see a statement on American consumerist culture. But Chan said the essence of his work is more “celebratory” in nature.
“I love the little niche things about our culture. I love that it’s almost like two different countries in one packed area,” Chan said, adding that his experience growing up in the Midwest and bouncing around Southeast Asia with his father has given him a distinct outlook on American culture.
“A lot of my friends are liberal or progressive, but a lot of the time, because of their beliefs, they had a tendency to overlook a lot of interesting facets about our country.”
Chan goes on to explain that his father, himself the son of slave laborers, “made something out of nothing” and “fought really hard” to afford his own children a uniquely American dream.
“It’s fascinating to think that we’re two generations away from slaves escaping communism in China and I can be somebody who makes stuff out of sauce packets,” Chan said.
Most recently, Chan was chosen as one of two artists to participate in a six-month residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Encinitas location (ICA North). The residency, which began in January and ends in June, will culminate in a 2025 dual exhibition of Chan’s work, alongside fellow resident artist David Peña.
The theme of ICA’s residency centers on “healing,” and while Chan appreciates having thematic parameters, he also told ICA that he wanted to explore “something like the antecedent of healing,” and a more broad “body of work to conceptually highlight American loneliness and to better understand the kind of social responsibility that all artist’s carry.”
“It’s a new opportunity for me, because I feel like I’ve already been good at conveying the more specific parts of my own loneliness in my work, The feeling of being a Midwesterner in California, or the feelings of someone who is Asian American and who has a different family lifestyle,” Chan said. “But now, the thing I most want to tap into now is a more general feeling. I’d like for more people to be able to take something away from my work.”
Combs is a freelance writer.
