STAVANGER.- Kiang Malingue shared Wong Ping's solo exhibition ‘༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽ ~♡’ at Kunsthall Stavanger. The exhibition features Wong Ping’s latest video animation Sorry for the late reply (2021), commissioned by New Museum, New York; the renowned series Wong Ping’s Fables (2018-2019); and two earlier works An Emo Nose (2015) and The Other Side (2015).

Through animations, sculptures and installations, Wong Ping tells stories that challenge our habitual ideas of human desire, loneliness, shame and repressed sexuality.

Wong’s animations are rendered in a bright aesthetic reminiscent of early video games. This light-hearted, humorous, and accessible visual language helps to diffuse lewd and offbeat stories that explore dark corners of human nature, in which protagonists often experience deep psychological issues, as well as simultaneously disguising meditations on larger societal structures such as immigration, social relations, economic anxieties, and morality.

As a Hong Kong native, Wong’s observations of the city’s residents’ daily lives and mindsets are a central element in his works, where he presents reflections on the changing social and economic environment in the region, with emphasis on Hong Kong’s tense relations with mainland China. In the context of a community under siege, specifically wherein political dissent has become tantamount to criminal behavior, the artist’s playfully subversive practice is as important, powerful and progressive as any.

Wong’s work creates a hallucinatory, surreal, and frightening image of contemporary life. In describing his practice, he points to his favorite song by The Velvet Underground and its lines, “I’ll be your mirror/Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know”.