Steven Wang

Lives and works in Hong Kong

Artist statement

I am captivated by certain images and I analyze them through the medium of oil paint. These images can appear in any form and from anywhere–film stills, art historical references, found photographs and personal snapshots–and their subject matter are as varied as their origins. Through such analyses, I aim not only to understand these specific images more deeply (in turn loosening their grip on me), but more importantly to investigate and possibly to extricate myself from the indulgent relationship with images in general. I do not have a specific process for painting just as there are no consistent themes uniting the works–every painting is started anew as an individual investigation. Some subject matter–intricate patterns of windows, mise-en-abyme of perspectives–intuitively require meticulous application while others intuitively looser ones. I follow the image itself for the process. My only restriction is that the final painting should be devoid of textures (not touch), that it should be a pure, flat image in dialogue with and in the economy of the original source image. Tactility and the painting’s status-as-object do not enter my process of making. The exception to this rule is my Rückenfigur series which began in 2019. In search of what is other in their source images, what is hidden behind the visible, I push the paint through the porous raw linen and turn the painting inside out at the end. The final, displayed painting is both the exposed inner workings of the...

Artwork