Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion)

2012 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

60H x 60W x 5D inches

Adrian Wong

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong. Intrigued by the accidental preservation of historical building material by renovations and rebuilding, Wong began paying attention to the experience conveyed by layered forms accreted to affect the visual historicity of a space. The geometric forms in the piece are welded together as a composite replica of a metal grate from a children’s playground next to Wong’s studio, a security grate door from his apartment complex, and the latticework that holds an air conditioner from an electronic store, and a front grate from an elementary school on his bus route. This melding is a recognition of objects that normally recedes into the background of one’s experience in the city by recognizing their role as partitions that break visual fields into parallax spaces or planes of movement.

Born and raised in Chicago, Adrian Wong was originally trained in research psychology at Stanford University. He began making and exhibiting work in San Francisco while concurrently conducting experiments on young children for his Masters degree. Wong’s training in psychology made him aware of the limitation of research methodology, which ultimately redirected his interest to other aspects of his research subjects: “I’m not looking for universal facts; I’m looking for more subjective and affective entry points.” He has been based in Hong Kong, S.A.R. since 2005, where he is the co-founder and director of Embassy Projects, an arts consultancy and independent production studio. His installations, videos, and sculptures draw from varied subjects and explore the intricacies of his relationship to his environment. These relationships, often relying on collaboration with subjects, take on modes of the experiential, historical, and cultural, at times, filtered by fantastical or fictionalized narratives.

Colors:

• amalgam.n.02
• division.n.12
• foreground.v.01
• history.n.01
• average.s.02
• layer.v.01
• collective history
• color photography
• contemporary conceptualism
• contemporary surrealistic
• american