Caison Wang: Hyperland

EVENT DESCRIPTION

DE SARTHE is pleased to present the first solo exhibition for its newly represented artist Caison Wang, titled Hyperland. Featuring a body of large-scale works on canvas, the exhibition combines whimsical yet ghoulish imagery with deconstructed references to humanity and religious deities. Contemplating the binary notions of morality and more, the artworks depict a liminal world in which Wang reinterprets heaven and hell as a psychological experience as part of the empirical human condition.

Titled after Hyperion, referring to the “one who passes through the sky or looks down from the sky” in Greek mythology, Hyperland observes fictional characters Jack and Mary through the lens of an omniscient narrator. Illustrated as two skeletal figures, Jack and Mary are neutral representations of human beings. As if the protagonists to one continuous story, the figures are seen acting out different scenarios in each artwork while immersed in surrealist landscapes that the artist built via 3-D modeling software. Combining digital lattices with near-psychedelic colors evocative of either enlightenment or hell, Caison Wang’s artworks allude to the idea that pain or transcendence under the context of morality is but an artificial construct generated by and for the human psyche. A perplexing amalgamation of idyllic and dystopic imagery, Hyperland proposes more than a rejection of the pre-existing definitions of good versus evil but issues a challenge toward all dichotomies set forth by dogmatic philosophies.

Caison Wang’s practice interweaves the physical, virtual, and spiritual. Crafting new visual symbols, patterns, and characters via a range of tangible and digital media, her works explore the new-found fluidity of religion, materialism, and morality in contemporary society. As exemplified in Hyperland, her construction of imagined topographies using 3-D modeling addresses the notion of an omniscient and omnipotent creator in the post-technology era. In the dawn of humanity’s acquired ability to build, fabricate, but also destroy and annihilate new realities, Wang elucidates a philosophical conundrum in which she asks: Do gods still exist and if so, what differs them and us?

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Caison Wang (b. 1991, Guangdong) graduated from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts with a B.F.A. in 2015 and received her M.F.A. from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019. Her practice explores globalization, cultural hierarchies, Asian identity, as well as the social and philosophical geneses of contemporary beliefs. Using a vast range of materials including painting, sculpture, and 3D modeling, Wang navigates the physical and virtual as a visual explorer and conveys a grand narrative via her works.

Wang’s recent solo exhibitions include Hyperland, DE SARTHE, Hong Kong, China (2023); Pantheism, 2xGuan Contemporary Art Space, Luoyang, China (2021); Unconscious Hierarchy, Swatch Art Center, Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China (2019); and Unconscious Hierarchy, Trios Gallery, Atlanta, USA (2019). Her recent group exhibitions include Metaphor and Gaze, LA VIE Art Center for Material Living, Shenzhen, China (2022); Metamorphoses of Nature – Patterns and Spatiotemporal Orders of Mythology, Yuheng Museum, Guangzhou, China (2022); One Ton Project, Beijing Design Week, Beijing, China (2021); Boolean Existence, Galley Gallery, Shanghai, China (2021); Contemporary Digital Art Fair (CADAF), New York, USA (2020); Luscious Relics, PLAZZA DI SANT’EGIDIO, Rome, Italy (2019); and more.

Caison Wang now lives and works in Shanghai.