from the archive - ming fay

In November 2025, kurimanzutto, New York, opened Midnite Porridge, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by Shanghai-born, New York-based artist Ming Fay (1943–2025). Spanning nearly his entire career, the show brings together large-scale sculptures, paintings, and drawing studies inspired by fruits, seeds, plants, and shells — forms through which Fay explored the human encounter with nature. Following his passing in February 2025, this edition of From the Archive reflects on Fay’s enduring legacy as an artist who bridged Eastern and Western cultures. Grounded in the Chinese philosophy of tian ren he yi — the unity of humanity and nature — his work illuminates the symbolic potency of botanical forms and the ways they speak to human longing, growth, and transformation.

Fay’s life was shaped by two major sea voyages. The first came at eighteen, when he traveled to the United States on a full scholarship to Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio. As one of the school’s first Asian students, he initially pursued industrial design at his father’s suggestion but eventually discovered a passion for sculpture. In 1965, he transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute, earning a BFA in 1967, and later completed his MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1970. During these years, he created large geometric steel sculptures that reflected his deepening interest in form and spatial structure.

After marrying Peili Chang, the couple joined the Semester at Sea program —a teaching opportunity that doubled as their honeymoon. During the voyage around the world, Fay created his first wishbone sculpture from a clothes hanger and paper, making a wish for a child. Based on an enlarged chicken trigeminal bone, the wishbone became one of his signature motifs, symbolizing hope and desire through the ritual of breaking a wishbone for good luck. Their son, Parker Fay, was born later that year. 

In 1984, Fay took part in Erotica, an Epoxy Art Group projection piece that cast images onto a building façade at Spring Street and Broadway, turning the streetscape into a shared, embodied experience. Fay’s mollusk-inspired drawings — with their smooth curves and suggestive openings — carried an erotic charge that highlighted the connection between the human body and natural forms. This overt eroticism becomes subtler yet remains present across many of his works, reflecting his sensitivity to the sensual qualities of natural forms.

These thought processes come into focus in Midnite Porridge (1987), a self-published artist book that traces his exploration of the connections between art, nature, and well-being. The book gathers sketches, aphorisms, and reflections from this transitional period — ideas in flux, some later becoming sculptures and others remaining open propositions. For Fay, porridge was more than simple nourishment; it symbolized transformation, a process in which disparate ingredients blend, simmer, and become something sustaining.

Fay was eager to bring his fantastical gardens and imagined worlds outside. Throughout his career, he completed numerous public art commissions across the United States. His first permanent project, Enigma Elm, was installed in 1995 at P.S. 7Q in Elmhurst, Queens, and it featured a monumental bronze gate in the shape of an elm leaf.

Among his most significant commissions is a 2004 mosaic installation for New York’s Delancey–Essex Street subway station, created through the MTA Arts for Transit program. Drawing on local history, Fay was inspired by the DeLancey family’s eighteenth-century cherry orchard and the shad fish once common in the Hudson and East Rivers. As Fay explained, his aim was always to reconnect viewers with nature: “In modern urban environments, the need for a reminder of the natural world is particularly significant and necessary. In my work I strive to demonstrate the wonder of even the humblest natural forms, lending the viewer a new appreciation of the ordinary.” 

In 2025, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston opened Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden, the first retrospective of Fay’s career. Featuring more than 100 works — including sculptures, drawings, and sketchbooks — the exhibition offered a comprehensive view of his practice and underscored the breadth of his contributions to contemporary sculpture. Fay passed away a few months before the show opened on February 23, 2025, at age 82. The loss lent the retrospective a deeper resonance and affirmed the enduring impact of his work.