Yu-Whuan Wang
Biography
Yu-Whuan is a New York and Kyoto based artist. She was Director of PhilosophyBox Gallery in New York, and Director of Design at Li Kuo in Taiwan. Yu-Whuan studied with Shimamoto Shozo, a pioneer of the Gutai group, while attending Kyoto University of Education, where she also studied sculpture with Yamazaki Masayoshi and Kishiro Yoshiji, as well as painting with Abe sensei. She also separately studied sculpture with Yamamoto Kakuzi. She completed a further year of concentrated research in contemporary sculpture at the university. Her earlier studies in Taiwan included painting with Shen Zhe-Zai and Zeng Pei-Yao.
Yu-Whuan has had major public and select private exhibitions, including at the New York Historical Society, Teller Boricua Gallery, Pleiades Gallery, ArtReach Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and Space31 in Japan. At the invitation of the Ga-Un Sculpture group, she had a special guest solo exhibit in the Kyoto Art Museum. She also has had solo shows at Ando Tadao Architecture Ayabei City Plaza, and other museums and galleries. Her outdoor exhibitions include The Global Warming Prevention in Kyoto Convention celebration. She received a “MURASAKI” award for the 47th Kyoto Exposition. She also is a member of the Kyoto Sculptor Association.
What first prompted you to think of becoming an artist?
Art was always part of my life, naturally. At nine, I was drawing like cubist, deforming figures and shapes, acting like an action artist. I first worked as a designer, but I went back to school for sculpture, and afterwards, I kept going full steam ahead.
What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?
I like the idea of my work as being, literally and figuratively, “in the light of.” Philosophical yet concrete, simple yet wild. I work with many media, separately and together. I like to find material and borrow environments. I always like to work with nature.
What are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?
An encounter together. A synergy of vision. An invitation—to the invisible, to thought, to now.
Can you explain the process of creating your work?
I always have a big vision, connecting the simple to the important. I often find everyday objects that speak to me as material, and I borrow from the surrounding environment as part of the art. I often am making more than one artwork at a time. That helps me catch my thoughts quickly. I call that process “writing them down.”
What is your favourite part of the creative process?
The process—of finding seeds, even before the art is born; of the conscious and unconscious dance of materials; of meeting what is real, manifest and unmanifest together; of immersion in the unique here and now, working with no conditions but what is there; of the moment of making them happen and bringing them into our lives.
Can you give us an insight into current projects and inspiration, or what we can look forward to from you in the near future?
Right now, I’m working on freeing boundaries, on conversations between 2-D and 3-D in the same work, together with light and sometimes photography, between the field of view and the embodied space, between the work and where it is. I’m bringing together visual languages, in harmony and contradiction. I’m interested in layers of time and with how viewers interact with the work from their own perspectives, how new moments now are reborn.
Website: www.yuwhuan.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yuwhuan/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yuwhuan
"Uncertainty Relation - Untie" 2020 / Painting, Sculpture, Installation, Photography / 9 x 16 x 9"
