Paul Wong
Multiverse
Opening: Saturday, September 12, 2:00pm
Conversation with the artist, Tuesday, September 15th, 6:00 pm
Text by Joan Fontcuberta, guest curator
« The post-photographic readiness to make use of overwhelming quantities of images is reminiscent of what Umberto Eco refers to as a “catalogue aesthetic,” as opposed to a “finished form aesthetic.” Today, production and distribution are no longer successive phases in the visual communication process – rather, they are merged into one simultaneous action. This creative strategy dictates the conceptual framework of Paul Wong’s works. A massive compilation of images fuels projections and video installations, based on complex classification criteria and spatio-temporal structures, governed by the “catalogue aesthetic.” »
« Known as a prolific multimedia artist, Paul Wong has experimented with all facets of the image. His noteworthy recent projects include Solstice (2014), a video made using the pixel motion filter tool in After Effects – similar to the time-lapse technique – that condenses the twenty-four hours of the longest day of the year, on a Vancouver street, into twenty-four minutes. Evoking surveillance-camera documentary parameters, the work captures suspicious choreographies in “Crack Alley,” an infamous drug-trafficking and -consumption site. In another installation, #LLL, Looking, Listening, Looping (2014), Wong covered a wall with forty screens, each presenting a loop of animated GIFs, ranging from selfies to abstractions, that celebrate iconic diversity. In the view of Akimblog’s Amy Fung, these images “blur the shapes and patterns of capture and existence.”Another similar project, Year of GIF (2013), presents hundreds of photos taken with a smartphone over the course of a year, creating a mosaic of virtual flipbooks over which flows a kaleidoscopic miscellany of tremendously diverse photographs.»
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