Poyen Wang 
Residency:
October 1 – December 30, 2018

Poyen Wang is a New York based artist from Taiwan. His art practice primarily takes the form of video and installation, creating immersive environments to provoke  viewers’ emotions and imaginations. His work usually derives from personal experience and then evolves into research of the people or places he is associated with in order to explore their collective history and memory. Using digital media, especially moving images and 3D animation as primary medium, he is concerned about how complex and intricate our identities are under the influence of digital culture and globalization. He examines how we perceive the outside world and our own existence in an age when our bodies are extended by advancing technology and our perceptions of reality are deeply intertwined with the cinematic.

Reprise (2018) is a computer-generated animation project centering on subjects such as childhood trauma, the school system, peer pressure, and teenage melancholy. In this work-in-progress, alternative reality blends with surreal dreams, the protagonist, a schoolboy alienated and isolated from his peers, sleeps alone at his desk in a dark classroom while the windows display a vivid blue sky, and practices basketball endlessly in an empty playground under harsh weather conditions.

This new work in progress, which was developed by Taiwanese artist Poyen Wang while at 18th Street Arts Center, will be presented in a screening during a reception on Wednesday, December 12, from 6-8 pm. For free tickets, RSVP here.

He was the fellowship recipient of a government sponsorship for overseas study from Taiwan in 2015 and won the Gold Medal Award at Taiwan National Art Exhibition in 2017. He completed the AIM program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City in 2018. He received his master’s degree in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts in 2015, and his second master’s degree at the School of Visual Arts with a Paula Rhodes Award in Computer Art in 2017.

Poyen Wang’s residency is generously funded by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, and supported by Taiwan Academy Los Angeles.

Artist Website

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