Artist Statement/ Biography

Yefang Wang works with two of his biggest addictions: digital visual culture and the ecstasy of superficiality. The fascination with digital virtual images for art making does not derive only from exploring the alluring possibilities, but also working with its problematic. The digital virtual world is cold and isolated but never lack of fun experiment. The superficiality of consumerism is absurd, spectacle, overwhelming, and ironically profound and effective. Both of them are the sequence of calculation for utmost efficiency. Both of them are the glamor and outrage inherent in the system of mathematical binary.

His digital avatars are the products of this system of mathematical binary, and created as his personal incarnation. He is fascinated with his virtual characters because they eternally pursue a status of peaceful meditation but always end up as neurotic grotesques. They contain fragments from the society he lives in, and assist him with the process of exploration. Yefang is able to give his virtual characters the most honest expression of coldness and absurdity with the typical shortcomings carried by the digital media he utilizes.

Yefang's narrative is an uncanny complex of his Chinese foundational inheritance, a blurred memory of political outrageousness, and the extensive influence of Westernized consumerism. The juxtaposition of these seemingly contradictory facts reflects Yefang as a Chinese who is immersed in the vortex of a social dilemma.

Yefeng Wang is a Chinese media artist. He was born in 1984, in Shanghai, China. In summer 2011, he finished his MFA studies in Art and Technology Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). After graduation, he started teaching and helping develop digital related courses in the Department of Film, Video New Media and Animation as well as Art and Technology Studies at SAIC as an instructor. He currently teaches in the Art Department at Rhode Island College as an Assistant Professor.

Yefeng actively pursues his artistic career in both China and America, and continues think and work critically across the medias among Experimental 3D, video installation, Performance in Virtual Environment, and Art Game. Yefeng has had extensive experience exhibiting and working in prestigious venues internationally, which include InVisible (Co-­‐ prosperity Sphere Culture Center, Chicago, IL), Currents 2012, Santa Fe International New Media Festival (El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM), Hypercapitalism – East meets West (Herald Square, NY), Power of Copying (Xuzhou Museum of Art, China), Impersonal -­‐ solo exhibition of Yefeng Wang (HEREarts Center, New York, NY), There is A Body On Screen! (The Museum of Luxun Academy of Art, Shenyang, China), Post-­‐ photography (99 Art Space of Shanghai University, Shanghai, China), solo exhibition – I-­‐ generation (Hong Kong Art projects Gallery, Central Hong Kong), etc. He was also a residency artist and juried panel member in New York Artist Residency and Studios Foundation in summer 2013 and 2014.