Wong Ping | Dear Can I Give You a Hand?
10 and 11 October, h 10.00 – h 20.00
OGR Cult | Duomo
Wong Ping
Dear Can I Give You a Hand?
Video installation, 2018, 12 mins. loop
In typical Wong Ping's style, his installation Dear Can I Give You a Hand? – originally realised for an exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York – is a video animation on a freestanding ledwall that presents, with its DIY graphics inspired by arcade videogames, the scenario of a dystopian future.
Behind the naive graphics and colours, Wong Ping's animations conceal a world populated by the worst perversions: the noisy aesthetics of the videos immerse us in dystopian worlds, probing unconfessable desires, political interference and complex social relations. Combining phantasmagoria with social critique, the artist's work is both entertaining and disturbing and plays, with a good dose of black humour, on the limits imposed on freedom by politics and censorship.
The disturbing and surreal story of abuse and oppression within a family is the basis of the black fable Dear Can I Give You a Hand? The story stages the generational conflicts between a young married couple and their father-in-law with whom they are forced to share a house: among evictions, thefts and unconfessable desires, the daily life of the protagonists develops through unlikely events, in a ménage à trois based on role-play, envy, psychoanalytic projections and frustrations.
Walking along the border between shock and humour, Wong Ping's animated videos express his observations on contemporary society through fantasy anecdotes that reveal the deepest hidden traits of human nature. In his video the artist deals with the intergenerational tensions caused by the relentless pace of the digital economy.
Wong Ping lives and works in Hong Kong. Emerged from the city's underground cultural scene, Wong Emerged from the city's underground cultural scene, Wong began his career in the field of television before founding the Wong Ping Animation Lab in 2014, entering the art world. His artistic approach is based on a visual language coming from the world of pop animation, from the noisy graphics of 1980s video games, always on the edge between funny and disturbing, phantasmagoria and social critique.
Recent exhibitions include: Heart Digger, Camden Arts Centre (London, 2019); Golden Shower, Kunsthalle Basel (Basel 2019); Who's the Daddy, Capri (Düsseldorf, 2018); One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2018); Songs for Sabotage, New Museum (New York, 2018). His works feature in the following collections: M+ (Hong Kong), KADIST (Paris/San Francisco), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Fosun Art Foundation (Shanghai). In 2018, he received the inaugural Camden Arts Emerging Arts Prize. In 2019, he was one of the winners of the Ammodo Tiger Short competition at the 48th International Film Festival Rotterdam.