Andrew Yang
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Born 1973, Atlanta, Georgia; lives in Chicago, Illinois
Stella’s Stoichiometry (All things being equal, 6 lbs. 13 oz.), 2012; water, rock sugar, canola oil, powdered L-Arginine, three oyster shells, baking powder, glass containers, inkjet print; 22 x 12 x 12 inches/55.88 x 30.48 x 30.48 cm
Stella’s Stoichiometry (seven years, all things renewed, 40 lbs.), 2019 water, Legos, bituminous coal, ethanol, fertilizers, chalk, glass containers, inkjet print; 50 x 18 1/2 x 16 inches/127 x 18.5 x 16 cm
Trained as a chemist, I spent hundreds of youthful hours calculating how to equitably transform one thing into another. Through this discipline of balancing chemical equations – stoichiometry – things like tablets of aspirin can be turned into vanilla, water and air into sugar. Something balanced chemically to anything else is a matter of matter and its uncanny transformation..
Andrew S. Yang
This portrait of the artist’s daughter at birth is based on the six elements that make up 99 percent of her material being. Yang exactingly calculated the amounts of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, hydrogen, and calcium from Stella’s birth weight and proportions and has presented them in the form of things that were available at the grocery store. This representation of Stella’s chemical makeup offers a poignant reminder that most matter is composed of the same elements; it is simply their combination that determines the final form.
Based on the popular belief that all cells in the human body regenerate every seven years, the artist recreated the original portrait of his daughter Stella’s Stoichiometry (all things being equal, 6 lbs. 13 oz.), on the adjacent wall. This time, he has chosen a different set of materials to represent the six elements that make up 99 percent of her body. These substances, including plastics and fertilizers, give a nod to the very different kinds of materials that have been incorporated into her body over her first seven years.
Joey Orr, writer and critic
Andrew Yang, who sought graduate work in studio art after completing a PhD in biology, describes his interest in translating the often dry language of science and the oblique information of statistics into visual and poetic forms. Here he presents a version of his daughter at age seven, as he revisits the work he refers to above.
Image courtesy of artist
