Wong Ping: anus whisper

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Kiang Malingue presents “anus whisper”, an exhibition of recent installations, sculptures, and films by Wong Ping. Inspired by the experience of paracusia, Crumbling Earwax, Georges Bataille’s The Solar Anus, and a tête-à-tête with a stranger in bed in the afternoon, the sizeable artworks thematically and formally correspond to one another, exploring the aesthetic meaning(-lessness) of bullshit, expanding Wong’s curious body of art that revolves around circular narratives and motifs.

The titular anus whisper (2024) departs from the erotic-topological story of Crumbling Earwax (2022), incorporating an unprecedented portion of newly filmed footage in the animated story: while fart sounds are generally commonly assumed to be natural, they are in fact the product of the protagonist’s laborious efforts to improvise sounds as people fart. In anus whisper, he is seen conversing in bed with a stranger before heading to work; the newly found experience of anal auditory hallucinations reminds him of an irreconcilable relationship with another stranger. Interwoven into Wong’s story is Bataille’s early surrealist text The Solar Anus (1931), repeatedly and freely parodied in the film that confounds both the senses, and the dichotomy between the cephalic and the sexual-intestinal—the anus is taken as a mouth through which whispers are emitted, and words are in turn transformed into abject things. Numerous lines from Bataille’s text, such as “Disasters, revolutions, and volcanoes do not make love with the stars,” serpentine and metamorphose in the film. In addition, the possibility of becoming one’s lover as suggested by the French author (“Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.”) finds resonance in anus whisper‘s topological confusion of bodily cavities and canals, and of love, fetishism, aversion and apathy.

Wong often acts as the sole voice-over narrator for many of his videos and animations, telling stories about interpersonal connections and relationships. For the present exhibition, Wong fosters interactions and collaborations in the creative process: working with artists, musicians, and professionals from different backgrounds, Wong invites actors to perform on and off screen, delivering dialogues that are at once profound, passionate and ambiguous. The new sculpture      ) * (     (2024) also occasions another collaboration: Wong invites a musician to improvise with a trumpet inside the giant asshole sculpture at the opening of the exhibition, echoing the story of anus whisper.

Also included in the exhibition is the three-channel video installation Crumbling Earwax (2022) and blah-blah-blah (2022); the latter employs earwax fired into a copper ear sculpture to produce paracusia sounds reminiscent of church bells. After the exhibition of “Your Silent Neighbor” at the New Museum in 2021, the two monumental pieces were commissioned for the exhibition “Earwax” at Times Art Center Berlin in 2022, demonstrating Wong’s expanding interest in inner experience—channeled by the eyes, ears, mouths, noses, skins, and genitalia. Towards the end of anus whisper,  Wong declares after Bataille that “earwax is the parody of tolls,” contemplating the excess that is the negligible, abject things such as earwax, auditory hallucinations, filth, or shit talk out of an asshole. The time has come to restore power to the filth being watched.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Wong Ping (b. 1984, Hong Kong) has been creating a series of highly stylised, absurd and erotic animation films since 2010, and is considered one of the best storytellers of his generation. In recent years, Wong has staged large-scale, immersive solo exhibitions that integrate cinematic, sculptural, textual and interactive elements at institutions such as New Museum, New York; Camden Arts Centre, London; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, and has participated in exhibitions and screenings at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum Triennial; Pompidou Center, Paris; School of the Art Institute in Chicago; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Sundance Film Festival; SXSW’s Short Film Program; and M+, Hong Kong, among others.