The works in 5 Tips for Politely Rejecting a Booty Call from Your Neighbor's Dog showcases the artist's Fables series in which stories of anthropomorphic protagonists take center stage. Such players include a telepathic tree with a fear of cockroaches, a pregnant elephant that pursues life as a Buddhist nun, and a chicken who becomes a chief inspector of police and unintentionally kills his family. The artist employs a saturated neon palette to light his players, whose absurdist life stories cut to the heart of our mortal experience.
This exhibition continues Wong's exploration of three-dimensional space as a setting for his virtual artworks. His characters dwarf visitors through the grand scale of his projections, which are beamed onto two separate planes that alternate in their activation. This transition of the viewer's focus onto divergent spaces of simulation subtly draws the visitor back into the reality of the gallery space, recontextualizing the viewing experience as a physical act rather than one purely experienced through the total immersion of the flattened omniverse, that which makes up the all-consuming expanse of our digital everyday lives.
Wong Ping's Fables is presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2020, the university's annual program of exhibitions, lectures, and performances held Feb. 18–20 at locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia.
