[Press Release]
Osage Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition of work by Magdalen WONG.
Titled “A Flight of Fancy ”that suggests an abundance of imagination, the new series of
work include drawings, photographs and 2 video installations. Here the artist creates a
custom-made journey through a world filled with fantastical mischief.
The new works take as their starting point the subject matter of the packaging of everyday objects and advertising, extracting intriguing visual delights found within these sources that become trigger points for activating a work of art. Wong may isolate a single element found on examples of such packaging, or she will focus on the scenery depicted in advertisements that are stripped of the commercial products they were designed to
promote, setting up gateways that lead the viewer’s thinking in unexpected directions.
Using tactics of diversion to create different scenarios in which the context or materials
have been changed from what is normally expected to occur in familiar cultural settings, the works thus take on an idiosyncratic tone. The video work, “Power. Performance. Prestige” uses a majestic view as its backdrop, combined with the elegant soundtrack that is the hallmark of a cliché in advertising to provide a seemingly familiar scenario with a disturbing twist: the main character never shows up. The viewer suddenly realizes with the list of brand names running at the end credits that this is the point. A series of new works, “Found Landscapes, Hong Kong” offers a glimpse into apparently blank images, perhaps the ghostly traces of an ethereal landscape, which in the end turn out to be product packaging with their logos erased. The idea that natural scenery is used to signify the health and freshness associated with the image of a food product reduces such an image to something existing merely for consumption.
Wong does not intend to criticize the omnipresence of commercial advertising or a
consumption-driven culture; rather, the works emit a playful tone in their casual irreverence. She believes that since these signs and symbols are present in every aspect of our daily lives anyway, why not try to locate an aura of mystery or even a romantic undercurrent running through these parts of our culture, to pick up on something beautiful in places we normally overlook? This kind of off the cuff romanticism is precisely the artist’s idea of a romantic worldview, as WONG says “Romance comes from looking for what is beautiful to look at; it’s the process that is romantic.”
