Working with the mantra that the Earth is plummeting towards the Sun while just missing it, Wang combines scientific, technological, mythical, and spiritual perspectives to see how matter can be understood to embody existential qualities. Wang chooses materials that convey the sentient universe through sensual, tactile, and metaphoric means, and imagines how the nature of reality can be expressed in the language of sculpture and film.
Read MoreThrough first-hand encounters at geological and ancient sites as well as technological facilities—the Denali National Park in Alaska, the Tibetan plateau, the San Andreas Fault line, the Arctic Circle, SpaceX, Biosphere2, and the Mayan Pyramids, Wang investigates the uncanny dimensions of the natural world. Using sensitive plants, moss, fossils, meteorites, silver, gold, water vapor, wind, beeswax, and other metamorphic substances, her work explores the material consciousness of sculptural and cinematic forms. From the cosmic to the geologic to the molecular, matter — like relic radiation leftover from the Big Bang, corpses of prehistoric organisms that turned to stone, or wax secreted from the glandular abdomens of bees — reveal certain underlying forces in nature. Working with byproducts of the metabolic process of the universe, her work shapeshift and time travel within different timescales.
Alice Wang (b.1983, Xi'an) received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and International Relations from the University of Toronto, BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and MFA from New York University. She was a fellow at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Villa Aurora fellow in Berlin, and the recipient of several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Wang has presented solo exhibitions at Capsule Shanghai, Visitor Welcome Center, Human Resources, 18th Street Arts Center; participated in group exhibitions, screenings, and performances at the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition, Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Taikang Space (Beijing), FLAX Foundation, the Hammer Museum; and presented talks at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), and Shanghai Project. She is an assistant professor of arts at New York University Shanghai, and co-organizes The Magic Hour, an outdoor exhibition platform in the Mojave Desert in California. Wang is based between Shanghai and Los Angeles.
Text courtesy Capsule Shanghai.
