The animated video The Last Subway follows the narrative of a fictitious video game protagonist ZiyangMon (referring to Pokémon Go) who transforms into a live person. Featuring a late night subway where a series of absurd and carnivalesque stories take place, the viewer travels between mock CCTV newscasts, tbe Japanese pop music video Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, virtual reality footage, and a constructed subway station Los Jing (A virtual city in the combination of Los Angeles and Beijing); shifting between levels of reality like a video game. The work hints at how the virtual world increasingly influences human consciousness on both a macro and micro scale in our highly globalized and digitized society.
Exhibition History of The Last Subway
2017 - Illimitation, China Academy of Art — Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
2017 - The Model of the World: Zhangzhou International Contemporary Art Exhibition,
Zhangzhou Museum — Zhangzhou, Fujian, China
2017 - Amassing Force, Today Art Museum— Beijing, China
2017 - Dead Air, Cohen Gallery, Brown University — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
The Story of The Pig
2016
Color Digital Video with Sound
8 min., 42 sec
The Story of the Pig brings the viewer through to an absurd techno world where pigs adopt human-like debased actions, clicking photos of each other as they perform, breeding conformity and haplessly surrendering their freedom – They are destroyed by power in the first chapter (A world related to Aldous Huxley’s 1984) and self-destroyed by entertainment in the second chapter (A world related to George Orwell’s Brave New World) of the video. I appropriated the song “Fantastic Baby” from the Korean pop band BIGBANG, in which the pigs become infatuated with pop culture and ultimately become fans themselves of BIGBANG. The pigs lose their inner feeling and both their rational and creative spirit from a grotesque overdose of stimulation, entertainment and desire.
Exhibition History of The Story of The Pig
2017 - Andy Warhol: Minnesota Goes Pop, Rochester Art Center — Rochester, Minnesota, USA
2017 - WAVELENGTH II, The Hole Gallery — New York, USA
2017 - TimeLine, Rogue Space Chelsea — New York, USA
2016 - Ancestors are so yesterday, 2016 MCAD Faculty Biennial — Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
2016 - Meredith Sands / Ziyang Wu. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, USA
2016 - New Contemporaries: Selected work from the class of 2016. Gelman Gallery —Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2016 - RISD 2016 MFA Painting Thesis. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, NY, USA
2016 - RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2016. Rhode Island Convention Center — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2016 - The City’s Ephemeral Gestures, Providence Biennial for Contemporary Art — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Xia Che Dan (Bullshit)
2015
Color Digital Video with Sound
7 min., 4 sec
Foam, Wood, Metal
Dimension varies
Xia Che Dan means bullshit in Mandarin. It also means “shrimp pulling penis” if translated incorrectly character by character in Chinese. Talking bullshit is a cultural disease of current times, from society to individuals. I transformed the provocative nature of this word and the mistranslation from verbal into something visual with this piece.
Past Painting Works
Ticket
2015
TV monitor, acrylic on foam
28 x 35 x 13 inches
11 min., 8 sec
