Dates: March 5, 2019 - April 30, 2019
The Calgary Central Public Library
800 3 St SE, Calgary, AB T2G 0E7
Peep Show by Janet Wang is an ode to the online spectacle, as well as an ode to the site in which it is situated. As we walk through the built structures of our society, we are being organized, shifted, moved in a programmed way. While we stroll, run or wheel our way through the guts of the city, our hands are moving over other worlds, other contexts as we scroll, post or consume from our screens. Our hands, and the hands of others, become a digital proxy to our bodies moving through physical avenues.
Our brains are being reprogrammed by the way we absorb, seek and satiate our need for stimulation - visual, social and informational - online. We are constantly looking for that next hit of dopamine from a like, a repost, a frisson of recognition and confirmation in a headline or push notification. We devour silent films of hands unboxing, cooking, gesturing, demonstrating all the possibilities that we too can achieve. These hands become our hands, our possible selves, by digital proxy.
Janet Wang is a visual artist working within a traditional painting practice, integrated with sculptural installation practices and digital media. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia and her Master of Arts in Studio Practice from the University of Leeds in England.
Her work explores the construction of identity through the appropriation and disruption of social patterns and familiar gestures. The artist borrows heavily from the canons and traditions of history, both the artistic and the quotidian, in order to use the familiar as a meeting point with the viewer.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and is currently represented through the Art Rental and Sales at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She has been awarded residencies from the Arts Council of England, ArtStarts, the Burnaby Arts Council, and received awards from the Vancouver Foundation and the BC Arts Council.