Alice Wang

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

A hexagonal storm circles Saturn’s north pole. The same geometry appears in basalt columns on Earth and in the molecular structures of MDMA and serotonin—one synthesized outside the body, the other produced within it. I make sculptures and films that begin with encounters like these. I am drawn to moments when something I know about reality does not correspond to how I experience it. Sometimes the connection is formal: the same geometry appears across planetary, geological, and molecular systems. Sometimes it is physical: the Earth is falling toward the Sun even though the ground beneath us feels still. I follow these discrepancies through research, expeditions, and making, where the outcome becomes less certain. In sculpture, geometry provides one structure and material another. A hexagon passes from a planetary storm into clay; a subatomic relation becomes twinned stainless-steel forms that absorb and reflect light; cosmic background radiation becomes a field of more than 100,000 hand-painted glass tiles. Meteorites, fossils, ceramics, plants, heat, and water vapor bring their own histories and behaviors. Material does not simply carry the form; it changes what the form can do. Film makes other encounters possible. A radio telescope can follow a pyramid, a molecular structure can emerge from a volcanic landscape, and a pulsar can enter the space of a body. Through first-person cinematography, sound, found footage, and montage, places, memories, times, and scales that...

Artwork