You are here

Parallel

City:

Categories:

Exhibition Type:

How many artists: 
1

How many exhibition works:

Exhibition Total Value:

Date: 
Friday, 10 September 2021 to Saturday, 25 September 2021
Opening: 
Thursday, 9 September 2021 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Offshoot Gallery is pleased to present Wenxuan Wang’s first solo exhibition, Parallel. The exhibition is an ensemble of two series of her works, No Such Person Found (2019-2021) and Back To Nowhere (2020), in which Wenxuan becomes both an outsider and an insider exploring different narratives and memories. As she questions these unexpected encounters at familiar places, the parallel reality starts to manifest itself.
 

Archives, such as old family portraits, have always been carrying the weight of remembrance and preservation. Wenxuan is particularly fascinated by her own encounters with these visual narratives of a past in which she might or might not have participated in. Her series, No Such Person Found (2019-2021), documents a discovery in which her name had been replaced by a non-existent male in the family tree. As she stomps upon her own memories, she has never felt a limbo so overwhelming that she thought she had become a stranger in a strange land. The narrative behind the photographs and sculptures is materialised into elements that represent Wang’s unexpected identity issue. Old documents, traces of the faulty family tree, faces that are made disappeared…have all become symbols of her doubts and ruptures, representing the loss of authenticity.

In her series, Back to Nowhere (2020), Wenxuan explores the distorted textures of these negative transparencies by soaking the films and “ruining” them with liquid. As she uncovers the unseen forces in films and recreates the landscapes and family portraits, the process of distorting or destroying also becomes a symbolic act that denies the validity of archives and preservations.

An inquiry into the abandoned places and archived family images is Wenxuan’s way of constituting the parallel realities. While she tries to dig out all the possible clues, the parallel world forbids her; as if there is no intersecting point that leads her to more evidence. Yet when she falls between and betwixt her version of reality and her fantasy of knowing the parallel, the growing emotional attachment becomes the answer to the question: where have I been?

Artist:

Artist ( Description ): 

Wenxuan Wang (1996, China) is a London based artist, working with photography along with mixed media. Graduated from the Royal College of Art’s MA Photography in 2021, Wenxuan has been experimenting with various photographic techniques as well as sculptures. She investigates the concept of absence and the distortion of dynamic memory/memories. She also explores how photographic materials can serve as a means of presenting and delivering the ambiguity, fluidity, and malleability of memory/memories that manifest in multiple realms and forms of presences and absences. Questioning archives, histories, and meta-narratives, Wenxuan considers one’s individuated identity, as well as the memories, crucial for a constantly constructing and re-constructing narrative.

Telephone: 
+44 7900 673706
Other Info: 

Exhibition Hours:
Wed - Sat, 12pm - 6pm
Sun - 12pm - 4pm
or by appointment

Venue ( Address ): 

Offshoot Gallery
162 High Road
London, N2 9AS

Offshoot Gallery , London

Other events from Offshoot Gallery

view
Parallel
09/10/2021 to 09/25/2021
view
Children of Covid
07/09/2021 to 07/31/2021
view
Single Surface
06/06/2021 to 06/27/2021
view
Masculinity
10/16/2020 to 10/31/2020

Pages

Related Shows This Week in UK

view
HOMAGE TO QUAN AM BY MARIA THAN
03/28/2024 to 05/19/2024
view
Choir
02/02/2024 to 03/30/2024
view
Harold Cohen: Refactoring (1966-74)
03/08/2024 to 05/11/2024
view
COME BUILD A BOAT
11/21/2023 to 04/09/2024
view
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024
02/23/2024 to 06/02/2024
view
The Dark and the Light
03/06/2024 to 03/31/2024
view
Matt Connors: Finding Aid
03/08/2024 to 06/02/2024
view
Food as Medicine
03/18/2024 to 04/12/2024

Pages