Bio
Huy Lam is a multi-disciplinary artist whose current practice is obsessively focussed on sculpture. Ethnically Chinese, born in Vietnam, Lam is part of the group of refugees referred to as boat people. Arriving in the Niagara region of Canada at age 8, he used art as a way to communicate in this new foreign environment, and eventually went on to study photography at Humber College. Lam became an in-demand professional photographer, doing agency work in Toronto and NYC, until he left it all behind, following the confluence of two road accidents he was fortunate enough to walk away from. Concurrent to his commercial work, Lam always maintained a personal art practice. Central to his life and art is Lam’s meditation discipline which is both a source of inspiration and direction. His current passion of working with wood and metal explores the natural and the manufactured, with a focus on materiality and process.
Statement
Huy Lam is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto. Born in Vietnam, Lam’s practice is rooted in an ongoing fascination with non-verbal communication, with an emphasis on process based construction that is informed by his meditation practice. Having established a distinctive aesthetic from his precision of hand, the artist works with wood, brass, stainless steel and more recently paper. As a self-taught wood and metal-worker, Lam looks to celebrate the natural, diverse, and malleable qualities of his medium, with a focus on materiality and tactility. Using his experience as a professional photographer, Lam applies his understanding of light to his calculative designs, resulting in an illusion of form, dimension and space.
Huy Lam’s sculptures explore the unexpected intersections of our lives, how our disparate trajectories collide across time and space. “Although true linearity does not exist in our lives, or in nature, the human mind nonetheless attempts to impose this unattainable perfection upon our imperfect world.”
Film
This is a 3 mins short film that shows the process of how some of my work is created.
Exhibitions
2024 - Ready For Hearth - United Contemporary, Toronto - Group Show
2022 - Varied Course - Pierre-François Ouellette, Montreal - 2 Person Show
2022 - Conduit - United Contemporary, Toronto - Solo Show
2022 - From The Inside (Looking Out) - United Contemporary, Toronto - Group Show
2021 - Transmutation - Gallery Ether, Tokyo, Japan
2020 - Art Toronto - United Contemporary, Toronto - Group Show
2020 - In Bloom - Gallery Ether, Tokyo, Japan - Group Show
2020 - Painting + Sculpture - 2 Gallery, PEC - 2 Person Show
2020 - The Artist Project - Toronto - Installation
2020 - DesignTO Festival - Cosentino, Toronto - Solo Show
2019 - Art Toronto - United Contemporary, Toronto
2019 - The Space Between - United Contemporary, Toronto - Group Show for Art Toronto
2019 - Confluence - Kiko Space, Toronto - Solo Show
2019 - Greenland Is Blue - United Contemporary, Toronto - 2 Person Show
2017 - Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series - Toronto - Group Show
2017 - Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition - Orillia Museum of Art and History
2017 - Queen West Art Crawl - Toronto
2017 - Outside The Box - Public Art Commission
2017 - Untitled - Hashtag Gallery, Toronto - Group Show
2016 - Somewhere In Between - Black Cat Artspace, Toronto - 2 Person Show
2015 - War Show - Super Wonder Gallery, Toronto - Group Show
2015 - 3rd Thursdays On Dundas West - Hermann & Audrey, Toronto - Installation
2012 - Private Commission - Ripley’s Entertainment, Orlando, FL
2011 - Queen West Art Crawl - Toronto
2005 - Images of Burma - Gallery 61 - Toronto
Education
1992 - Graduated from Humber College Photography Program - Won the Polaroid Canada Award, Mamiya Scholarship Award and Professional Photographers of Ontario Award of Merit.
Press
2019 - Create! Magazine Issue 15
2011 - McDevitt, Caitlyn - A less hopeful Obama poster, Politico.com - 08/17/11 https://politi.co/3rGsq3x
2011 - Blazenhoff, Rusty - Portraits of People Created By Repeating Words In Very Small Type https://bit.ly/3jpiYON