Xiao Wang: Hyperfoliage

Flora and landscape play a big part in Wang’s practice. Most often, the actors in his paintings are found interspersed with plants that have exotic or disturbing qualities. Living in California, Wang encountered endless species that range from cacti and succulents, to fig trees and towering pines. Over time, his personal almanac has expanded from his travels across the country and abroad, and have taken different connotations based on lived experiences along the way. The artist states, “I paint vegetation with distorted forms and colors, depicting plants as uncanny, sublime, and supernatural beings. Simultaneously, I portray human figures with feelings of confusion and resignation, putting them at the mercy of the landscape.”

Wang’s visual and conceptual references range from Romanticism, The Symbolist Movement, and Magical Realism. Inspired by the sense of feeling lost and uncertain that many of those artists explored in the context of rapid social and cultural change, Wang wants his paintings to speak to contemporary anxieties in the face of ideological uncertainty and environmental crisis.

In conjunction with Hyperfoliage, Wang’s work is currently on view in the group exhibition “A Collective Escape” at Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn.