Haining Wang

Behind the excessive consumption and production of beauty / cosmetic products lurks an anxiety to preserve. Creams, gels, serums are layered onto the skin – a daily ritual in resistance to the passage of time.

A proliferation of humanoid miniatures as mass-produced shelf-top commodities. Empty vessels act as relics of today that will soon grow obsolete and irreproducible. The multiplication of their plastic armors. Muted rubber inflatables. Skins that serve as gloves to sheath and protect. Lying limp or standing precariously, the object is absent and a shell remains. 

Candy is one of our first biophysical experiences of the reflex of provocation and craving. Children are quickly conditioned to adopt these deeply desirable commodities into a syntax of exchange value. I have reproduced the Haribo gummies with inedible but alluring materials, transforming them into irresistible choking hazards.  

The artist performs a ritualistic embrace with a lover while covered in paint, thereby creating an imprint of one body on another which traces the shape and surface area of the moment of contact.

The imprint is then 3D scanned and fabricated in stainless steel – a material cold and rigid, a permanent monument to the temporary act of bodily colonization.

Pressure affects the surface area and power dynamics underlie every act of physical intimacy. The title of the work refers to the surface area calculated from the 3D scan of the embrace - a quantification of interpersonal connection.

Overlap of the maps of the two global superpowers – a cartographic Rorschach test for the subconscious interpretation of impending geopolitical collision. 

The surface area of contact between the lovers of Rodin’s "The Kiss" is traced and revealed as the two damned lovers are abruptly torn apart, frozen in a voided embrace. 

Well-constructed bureaucratic hierarchies are the engines of efficiency that support an organization. Political philosophers debate the contents of the social contract and grant varying degrees of control to the Leviathan. In the private sphere, wherein lies the legitimacy of this delegated authority, and what are its limits and extents?  

On an individual level, the supervisors’ power varies depending on political alliances, psychological dispositions and interpersonal dynamics. The subject is thus able to negotiate and shape their sphere of rights. In this work, the limp form on the floor hides its covert activities from surveillance by setting up the regular mechanical whirring of the robot vacuum inside it. Its soothing predictability distracts from the absurd futility of cleaning the inside of a garbage bag.

The supervising garbage bag hovers around jerkily on top of another robot vacuum. The flat female voice of the artist counts down to the hide and seek game and issues reassurances to the heap that it is nearby and watching closely.  

Facing the infinite rows and columns of the excel grid on my computer screen, I think of containers, compartments, blocks, joined together into walls and facades, making up the glossy, megalithic glass and steel structures that emblematize the power of private corporations. I think of ascending the building floors in pursuit of a capitalist fantasy. I think of the millions of birds that kill themselves colliding into the mirrored surfaces of skyscrapers, and how they spend their final seconds glaring at their own reflections. Or of Narcissus transfixed by the pool. I think of the Tyrell Corp. glass pyramid. And of scooping the moon from water. I think of a thin balance, an invisible wall, stained plexiglass, bricks of water, drowning birds, a plastic morgue, condensation, and wet bodies.