Artist: Evelyn Taocheng Wang
Exhibition title: Heatwave Wrinkle
Venue: Château Shatto, Los Angeles, US
Date: January 28 – March 11, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Château Shatto
From the artist:
Heatweave Wrinkle is a continued on-going project titled as Massage near me, where I share unintended experience (a special job in Amsterdam) in LA. Literal translation of Heatweave Wrinkle inspired from Chinese/American writer Eileen Chang’s writing language, which typically put two images together, and bring a metaphor-connection. However Eileen Chang passed away in LA in 1995, after 3 months she died alone at her apartment, her work was found by local policemen, and after many years she becomes super famous in China with her specially writing skill – collage, color, materials. Here, “Heatweave” means my own fantasy on local LA landscape, they are full of details of different images like plants, but also they are always linked to my cliché fantasy of local weather, because many friends told me, because of many mass media shows on TV or American movies. “Wrinkle” means time, indicate the time of “being young,” and if you receive our massage in Château Shatto for a hour, you won’t care/think it too much, so hope more woman visitors will come. The massage salon will be good at to give a special massage called “Wrinkle Track,” you can make appointment for receiving massage, during the massage treatment, you must bring and show an image of an landscape or a garden from your childhood to masseuse, and the masseuse will decide that she/he gives you a stronger massage or lighter massage with little strength, and she will tell you her own background where she/he comes from, and her own memory of those landscape. Then you will receive 5% discount: No image, No discount!
Evelyn Taocheng Wang expatriated China for Europe in pursuit of an international art education and is presently based in Amsterdam. Wang financed her studies working in Chinese massage parlors, servicing a segment of the wellness industry where physical and racial expectations produce the “experience.”
Maintaining a diary during her time working in the parlor, Wang is equipped with a compendium of stories. In her work these stories are at once transparent and stretched to a point of mystification. Where the diary narrativizes these experiences through language, Wang’s drawings map out the scenarios pictorially.
Heatweave Wrinkle continues the presentation of these drawings, paintings and massage scenarios, following from exhibitions and performances including her presentation at Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2016. Massage appointments can be scheduled for every Saturday throughout the exhibition. Local masseuses sourced by the artist and gallery will conduct the massages behind Wang’s sculptural screens to offer discretion, taking place in the main gallery of Château Shatto. The masseuse is paid at their demanded hourly and half-hourly rate. All scheduling inquiries can be directed towards gallery@chateaushatto.com
Evelyn Taocheng Wang was born in Chengdu, China in 1981. She lives and works in Amsterdam where she attended De Ateliers from 2012–2014, having studied previously at Städelschule, Frankfurt and Nanjing Normail University. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at De Hallen Haarlem, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Jakarta Yuz Museum and Galerie Fons Welters. Two Sights of the Elegant Mysterious Unearthly Princess Kaguya & Her Beggarly Nurtured Aristocratic Life Before She Flies Away With a Shining Ship was performed at the Stedelijk Museum in 2015. In 2016, Wang was awarded De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs and Dorothea von Stetten-Kunstpreis.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Heatwave Wrinkle, 2017
Installation view, Château Shatto, Los Angeles
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Heatwave Wrinkle, 2017
Installation view, Château Shatto, Los Angeles
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Heatwave Wrinkle, 2017
Installation view, Château Shatto, Los Angeles
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Landscape of LA 1, 2016, Ink on rice paper, artist frame, 40.5 x 37.75 in / 103 x 96 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Landscape of LA 1, 2016, Ink on rice paper, artist frame, 40.5 x 37.75 in / 103 x 96 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Landscape of LA 2, 2016, Ink on rice paper, artist frame, 40.5 x 37.75 in / 103 x 96 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Landscape of LA 2, 2016, Ink on rice paper, artist frame, 40.5 x 37.75 in / 103 x 96 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Heatwave Wrinkle, 2017
Installation view, Château Shatto, Los Angeles
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 2, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 59.1 x 39.37 in / 150 x 100 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 2, 2016 (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 59.1 x 39.37 in / 150 x 100 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 2, 2016 (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 59.1 x 39.37 in / 150 x 100 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 5, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 78.7 x 47.24 in / 200 x 120 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 5, 2016 (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 78.7 x 47.24 in / 200 x 120 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 3, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 59.1 x 39.37 in / 150 x 100 cm
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Untitled No. 3, 2016 (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 59.1 x 39.37 in / 150 x 100 cm