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Ming Wong "Cosmic Theatre"
Ota Fine Arts
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Ming Wong
This is Singaporean artist Ming Wong's second solo exhibition at Ota Fine Arts Tokyo, following the one in Singapore. Wong is known for his use of performance, video, installation, photography, and other techniques to recreate films and popular culture and to interweave them with human identity, social structure, and cinematic language. In recent years, Wong has been deepening his exploration of Cantonese opera (Peking Opera), a traditional popular entertainment for people in Greater China. In this exhibition, Wong will present video, photographic, and collage works that explore the relationship between the modernization of Peking Opera and the development of science fiction.
The video work presented in this exhibition is a component of "Wayang Spaceship," a large-scale outdoor installation commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum in 2022. but it is also used as slang for theatricality. Wong set up a silvery wayang stage resembling a spaceship in the container city, which symbolizes the country's history of development through trade and immigration. Screened on a screen bewitched with rainbow-colored lights was a video collage of Peking Opera footage from the 1950s to the 1970s, combined with science fiction films and Wong's video works. The protagonist, a learned warrior who could be described as Wong's alter ego, embarks on a journey that transcends time, space, and gender from Wayang's spaceship amidst a strange exuberance created by a remix of Peking Opera music, science fiction sound effects, and strobe-like flashes.
The "Astro Girl" series of photographic works produced in 2015 is derived from "Windows On The World (Part 1)," which was presented at the alternative space Para Site in Hong Kong in 2014. The installation consists of a spaceship set reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and a video of Wong in a spacesuit walking slowly through the ship with a Beijing Opera aria in the background. Just as in Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris," when the protagonist sees the sea of an unknown planet stirring from inside the ship, the female astronaut played by Wong peers out the window with an uneasy look on his face.
The new series of collage prints presented at his solo exhibition at Ota Fine Arts Singapore in January of this year similarly fuses Peking Opera and science fiction. Wong combines traditional Chinese drawings in monochromatic ink and brush strokes with portrait photographs of wayang actors and illustrations from Soviet science fiction magazines of the same period. Printed collages framed with rainbow-colored holograms create a unique and suggestive retro-futurism through multiple layers of diversity: cross-dressing actors, traditional Peking Opera characters with the dual faces of scholar and warrior, and science fiction magazines brought to Germany via Poland from a Ukrainian secondhand bookstore.
Wong's work embodies the transformation of tradition to suit the time and place, as seen in the Chinese opera, and the world of science fiction, which embodies the universe as a new frontier that was once dreamed of. These elements, which are common to all of Wong's works in this exhibition, recall the history of Singapore, where culture has been shaped by immigration and modern technology. Moreover, like Wong's previous explorations, the Peking Opera actor's transgression of culture, borders, time, and gender prompts reflection on socially imposed roles and the identities constructed through them. Departing from the port of Singapore and landing in Roppongi, Wayang's spaceship is an opera house that offers a glimpse of the past and a glimpse of the future. We hope you will enjoy the experience of being drawn into "another world" in this theater filled with sound, color, and images, where you will be enveloped in a sense of ecstasy.
The video work presented in this exhibition is a component of "Wayang Spaceship," a large-scale outdoor installation commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum in 2022. but it is also used as slang for theatricality. Wong set up a silvery wayang stage resembling a spaceship in the container city, which symbolizes the country's history of development through trade and immigration. Screened on a screen bewitched with rainbow-colored lights was a video collage of Peking Opera footage from the 1950s to the 1970s, combined with science fiction films and Wong's video works. The protagonist, a learned warrior who could be described as Wong's alter ego, embarks on a journey that transcends time, space, and gender from Wayang's spaceship amidst a strange exuberance created by a remix of Peking Opera music, science fiction sound effects, and strobe-like flashes.
The "Astro Girl" series of photographic works produced in 2015 is derived from "Windows On The World (Part 1)," which was presented at the alternative space Para Site in Hong Kong in 2014. The installation consists of a spaceship set reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and a video of Wong in a spacesuit walking slowly through the ship with a Beijing Opera aria in the background. Just as in Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris," when the protagonist sees the sea of an unknown planet stirring from inside the ship, the female astronaut played by Wong peers out the window with an uneasy look on his face.
The new series of collage prints presented at his solo exhibition at Ota Fine Arts Singapore in January of this year similarly fuses Peking Opera and science fiction. Wong combines traditional Chinese drawings in monochromatic ink and brush strokes with portrait photographs of wayang actors and illustrations from Soviet science fiction magazines of the same period. Printed collages framed with rainbow-colored holograms create a unique and suggestive retro-futurism through multiple layers of diversity: cross-dressing actors, traditional Peking Opera characters with the dual faces of scholar and warrior, and science fiction magazines brought to Germany via Poland from a Ukrainian secondhand bookstore.
Wong's work embodies the transformation of tradition to suit the time and place, as seen in the Chinese opera, and the world of science fiction, which embodies the universe as a new frontier that was once dreamed of. These elements, which are common to all of Wong's works in this exhibition, recall the history of Singapore, where culture has been shaped by immigration and modern technology. Moreover, like Wong's previous explorations, the Peking Opera actor's transgression of culture, borders, time, and gender prompts reflection on socially imposed roles and the identities constructed through them. Departing from the port of Singapore and landing in Roppongi, Wayang's spaceship is an opera house that offers a glimpse of the past and a glimpse of the future. We hope you will enjoy the experience of being drawn into "another world" in this theater filled with sound, color, and images, where you will be enveloped in a sense of ecstasy.
Schedule | Sep 2 (Sat) 2023-Oct 21 (Sat) 2023 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://www.otafinearts.com/ja/exhibitions/297-cosmic-theatre-ing-wong/ | ||||
| Venue | Ota Fine Arts http://www.otafinearts.com/ | ||||
| Location | 3F Piramide Bldg., 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0032 | ||||
| Access | 1 minute walk from exit 1a or 1b at Roppongi Station on the Hibiya or Toei Oedo line. | ||||
| Phone | 03-6447-1123 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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