Wong Ping: ༼;´༎ຶ ༎ຶ༽ ~♡: KUNSTHALL STAVANGER
Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Scandinavia by the Hong Kong-based artist Wong Ping. The exhibition continues Kunsthall Stavanger’s focus in 2021–22 on artists working with digital and screen-based art, which will culminate in the launch of a new digital platform in September 2022.
Through animations, sculptures and installations, Wong Ping tells stories that challenge our habitual ideas of human desire, loneliness, shame and repressed sexuality.
Wong’s animations are rendered in a bright aesthetic reminiscent of early video games. This light-hearted, humorous, and accessible visual language helps to diffuse lewd and offbeat stories that explore dark corners of human nature, in which protagonists often experience deep psychological issues, as well as simultaneously disguising meditations on larger societal structures such as immigration, social relations, economic anxieties, and morality.
As a Hong Kong native, Wong’s observations of the city’s residents’ daily lives and mindsets are a central element in his works, where he presents reflections on the changing social and economic environment in the region, with emphasis on Hong Kong’s tense relations with mainland China. In the context of a community under siege, specifically wherein political dissent has become tantamount to criminal behaviour, the artist’s playfully subversive practice is as important, powerful and progressive as any.
Wong’s work creates a hallucinatory, surreal, and frightening image of contemporary life. In describing his practice, he points to his favourite song by The Velvet Underground and its lines, “I’ll be your mirror/Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know”.
Wong Ping was born in Hong Kong in 1984, and received his BA from Curtin University, Perth, Australia in 2005. In 2018, he was the recipient of the inaugural Camden Arts Emerging Arts Prize, and in 2019, he was one of the winners of The Ammodo Tiger Short Competition at the 48th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Wong has completed a residency at the Chinese Centre for Contemporary Art (2015).
Solo exhibitions by Wong Ping include Your Silent Neighbor, New Museum, New York (2021); Heart Digger, Cam-den Arts Centre, London (2019); Golden Shower, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2019); Who’s the Daddy, CAPRI, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); and Jungle of Desire, Things that can happen, Hong Kong (2015). His work has been featured in important group exhibitions such as One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2018); 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage, New Museum,New York (2018); XO State Dark: Aristophanes, Arts Centre Melbourne (2017); RareKind China, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); Mobile M+: MovingImages, M+, Hong Kong (2015); and Essential Matters, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul (2015).
All installation above credit: © Kunsthall Stavanger, Photographer: Erik Sæter Jørgensen.
