KINK feature: Marcos Chin
Shibari (high-quality prints available in the shop)
artist: Marcos Chin
Brooklyn, New York, USA
artist instagram
(images featured below will also appear in the KINK book. available in the shop now.)
[dandy:] Your work in five words or less?
[Chin:] Storytelling, colorful, figurative, magic.
What are your personal kinks?
Muscle, tattoos, and underwear.
Turn ons?
My partner Mikee and my dogs day to day; morning gadabouts, family trips, dancing, drawing, and making art.
Turn offs?
I don’t like people who are narcissistic and self-centered.
Favorite subject?
Presently, a lot of the work I’m making is for clients, but whenever I have free-time I make artwork that feels more personal. Oftentimes they’re about my experiences as a gay person who’s part of the Asian diaspora. The art I make tells stories and each one is a component, or a vignette of a larger world that I’m creating. In terms of subject matter, that’s difficult to answer only because I don’t have a personal body of work that I’m focusing on at the moment; most of the work I’ve been making has been client-driven.
Ideal place to display your work?
I’d love for my work to one day be exhibited in a contemporary art gallery, like the ones in Chelsea in Manhattan, but in the near future my goal is to design a space, like a hotel in which I have the opportunity to create more of an experiential installation using my work as the starting point or center piece. The result wouldn’t appear as artwork hung on walls, rather it would explore materiality and exhibit as a blend of analog and digital expressions of my work. I’m really interested in my work transcending a still, two dimensional image.
Favorite non-art pastime?
Since the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of my free time exercising. Part of the reason was that I was feeling stir-crazy at home, and so moving my body and going outside to exercise alleviated some of this stress. Since then, working out has become something that I really enjoy, like an art project in which I’m sculpting myself into a version of whom I’d like to physically become- almost like a kink version of myself, ha!
Most memorable project?
One project I’ve made that I’m proud of and excited by is a metal wall relief sculpture for Starbucks at Resorts World in Las Vegas. The reason is because it’s a collaboration between myself and another artist/fabricator. I’ve always wanted to express my drawing in another medium and so this was an opportunity for me to do so. The piece I made for Starbucks is quite large, around twenty feet long and seven feet high, extending out of and along the length of a wall in their store.
Art crush?
Bjork, always.
Personal crayon color?
Yellow Terror. Reclaiming the 19th century racist and xenophobic term that Asians were a danger to the Western world.
What is unique about your process?
My process is a blend of analog and digital. Although most of my drawing is done digitally using Adobe Illustrator, I export the vector drawing into Procreate and Photoshop and from there, use the software as the foundation to incorporate analog handmade textures with my digital drawings. This part of my process is unorthodox in that I move back and forth from digital to using traditional art materials to make my work, going so far as to print out my work, paint onto it and then scan it back into the computer to work on it digitally. I’m not sure if this process is unique in the sense that nobody else works this way, because I’m sure others do, rather what makes it unique is that the marks I make are my own. I truly believe in the uniqueness of the artist’s hand; that the marks they make are specific to them and as a result, makes their work special.
In terms of subject matter, aside from my commercial projects, my personal artwork draws from memory and lived experiences through my queerness and race. Again, I’m not sure if this helps me to stand out from other artists, but I’m aware of why I make the work that I make, because it expresses parts of myself that I feel were forced into erasure in the past. The world is changing now, and voices that used to be considered marginal are starting to be heard and becoming louder. I see myself as one of those voices and so when I make my work, or at least some of it, I try to use it as a vehicle to uplift the LGBTQ+ and AAPI communities.
Why make art?
To be honest, I make art because it’s what I know; it’s what I’ve always been good at since I was little boy. I tried veering off course several times when I was younger because I was afraid that I wouldn’t thrive as an artist, but I was always drawn back to making art. I believe making art is my calling. I don’t know exactly what I intend to accomplish with, or through my work, but I do believe my work is an extension of who I am, and so the intention of the work that I make is to dialogue with the world I’m living in. I wouldn’t call my work activist art, but I have made some pieces in which in the intention was to tilt a light to individuals with whom I feel I have a kinship such as the LGBTQ+, AAPI and BIPOC communities.
What's next?
So far 2022 has been very busy. I’m working with several clients on projects that are all very different from each other; one is an installation in a store in NYC, another is a film poster and a third is an animation, alongside this are other print projects. I’m fortunate that I have steady work… In terms of personal projects, I’m doing those as well. I’ve been working on learning how to animate both classically as well as learning how to use Adobe After Effects. I’m also at the beginning stages of making either a graphic novel and/or a children’s book. I love writing and have dedicated journals specifically towards these two projects. So far, I’ve been jotting down notes, or things that inspire me which are related to the projects, but I haven’t made a concrete script or book dummy yet. Still, my future is exciting! I have a lot to look forward to, if not commercially, then definitely self-initiated art projects are on the horizon.
