KRISTEN WONG
Kristen Wong (b.1994) is a visual artist, photographer, and writer living and working in San Francisco. She has studied at Parsons School of Design, holds a BFA in Painting from California College of the Arts, and has an MFA from San Francisco State University, where she won the Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement. She has shown locally in the Bay Area, nationally in New York, internstionslly in Europe, and has completed residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin and Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. She is currently a studio resident at Minnesota St. Project in San Francisco’s Dogpatch district.
The four works we picked for the BEYOND MATERIAL are a combination of new editions of never-before-released new archival pigment prints with mixed media hand embellishments made specifically for the show and deep cuts of collages selected by Jimmy and Eunnuri pulled from the depths of my secret iCloud folders that have been reworked, rerendered, and emboldened and embellished in truth and detail. They are “self portrait in war room, vaping (over BevMo jetted hot springs)”, “all i see are red flags (green lights forever)”, “i fell like the flowers (false spring)”, and “I LOVED THE MESSIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD!!!”. If I were to categorize the images, I would describe them (in order of titles above) like this:
“war room, vaping” is probably the truest, most honest self-portrait I have ever made. I see it as a depiction of my true work state – me, dressed to the nines (as always), lost in a pile of papers, fuming drags of nicotine like a mythical Chinese dragon whose productivity and magic-making depends on monthly shipments from e-cigarette wholesalers with names like e-cig-mafia (yes that one literally) to survive. The part in the title of this piece that uses the word war room really just exists to acknowledge the relentlessness of the person I am - the insane time duration of time spent making and planning artwork and strategizing its existence, deciding whether an idea will see the light of day or die as a secret on the cloud, the scheming and dreaming, the warlike madness of it all. In this image both the self and the war room itself sit above a gussied up, glitter glue-glimmered hot tub full of ice and liquor – symbolizing the idea that beneath the work, and the war of existing as an artist in the current socio political climate, there are trappings of luxury, escapism, and vice that both keep me alive, wanting more, but simultaneously function as its own hell beneath the ideal working state of war room above.
The piece “all i see are red flags (green lights forever)” functions as a moment of emotional introspection and defiance. There is an intimate disclosure of the often-ignored cautions in life’s journey—the infrared red flags that signal stop, but to which my heart is blind. This is a personal confession, and a metaphor for the relentless pursuit of passion in the things and people I love, even when it leads astray. The vivid reds are not just signals of danger, but also the seductive horizon toward which my heart races, in defiance of reason and with an unwavering belief in the beauty that lies beyond obstacles so delineated in the path ahead. There are moments of gold here - truly good moments in life ahead on the horizon. Here, amidst the gold-flecked fields of red, the piece contemplates the paradox of human desire—the magnetic pull towards what we love, even in the face of potential downfall. Through it all, I see everything infrared, making me charge forth like a bull in Spain.
“I fell like the flowers (false spring)” The title speaks to the core of the piece; "False Spring" is a term replete with hope and disillusionment. It is the untimely awakening of a flower, which ultimately succumbs to the lingering elements of winter and cold. In the context of love and emotion, it represents an intense yet fleeting moment of connection and possibility that promises everything but has poor returns—love and a life that is as vibrant and lively as it is transient and ultimately, unfulfilling. The artwork, through its layered textures and contrast between the lush green and the fading petals, mirrors the roller coaster of these little affairs I’ve had throughout my life while looking for the one (have you seen him?), where something blooms (and dies!) against better judgment.
I don’t want to get too far into this one for reasons that will soon become obvious, but “I LOVED THE MESSIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD!” is a reproduction of a work based on an iPhone photograph of one of the many love notes I left for someone I had a huge crush on (and am now very close friends with) during one of the many residency programs I have attended since completing my MFA in 2021. I would just take prints and write notes to him all day - this one is fundamentally a self-portrait as well, a declarative statement about both him and I. It is “goblin mode”-core and it exists because I love, loved, him in a really big way -still do, it’s just platonic now- it is its own scarlet letter in a way.( But daddy I love him!!!)
Each of these works is made from photographs using my personal archive of phone and film camera photographs and rescaled to be vivid and larger than life in clarity and resolution - to highlight the inherent emotional truth in it all. In a way, they are all self-portraits. I feel that as an Asian American artist presenting in an exhibition during May, AAPI month, it is important to reference narratives that exist outside the binary of traditional Asian stereotypical journeys of becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. I took the same relentlessness and became a visual artist instead - and this is my story, these pieces are chapters of that story. In cultures that prioritize perfection, it is so important to highlight messier types of reality, failed loves and aspirations, and more goblin-mode methods of life type of shit.