Frank Wang Yefeng

Frank WANG Yefeng (b. Shanghai, China) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Providence (RI, USA) and New York (NY, USA). He received his MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011, and currently serves in the Digital Media Art program as an Associate Professor at Rhode Island College. Yefeng’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including BRIC Biennial (Brooklyn, NY), File Festival (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Governors Island Art Fair (NY), Currents New Media at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe (NM), Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago, IL), International Festival Les Instants Video (Marseilles, France), Festspielhaus Hellerau (Dresden, Germany), K11 Museum (Shanghai, China), Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai, China), and others. He was also an artist in residency at GlogauAIR (Berlin, Germany, 2020) and The New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation (Brooklyn, NY) in 2013).

Interview with Frank Wang Yefeng

Questions by Andreana Donahue

Can you tell us a bit about your background and where you grew up? In what ways have your early visual experiences and personal history led to art-making?
I've been enjoying making art since childhood. When I was little, both of my parents had to go to work every day, and I was always left alone at home. But I could easily spend the whole day just keep drawing by my self. Characters were one of my favorite things to draw as a kid. I guess those were my very early attempts to explore the ontology of the world. A kid's doodle is definitely Art! To this day, whimsical characters are still an important part of my story-telling, regardless of their forms.

It was natural for me to go to an art school for college. I grew up in Shanghai, China, so that was where I received my early-stage art studies. My bachelor's degree was in sculpture. At the time, the college-level art education was still mainly an inheritance of the Russian "Peredvizhniki (school of The Itinerants)" with a hint of French Impressionism. Repin and Rodin were a couple of masters being talked about the most in studios. I was taught quite a lot of realism skills, and I was pretty good at it. But at the same time, I somehow got very fascinated by moving-images too. I don't remember what triggered this fascination (probably related to some animations I saw), but I started teaching myself animation skills and made digital media pieces secretly after classes. In an educational environment that was mostly obsessed with making objects, I couldn't really show the works to many people for feedback. Regardless, the eagerness to explore different ways of creation has always been there. As soon as I completed college in Shanghai, going overseas (USA) for an MFA became a spontaneous decision. That's also when I transformed my practice mainly to video, 3D animation, and new-media art. 

Can you tell us about your studio and what a typical day is like for you? Do you share space or ideas with other artists while working, or is it a more solitary routine?
I have used a lot of different studios over the past several years. A stable studio has always been a luxurious situation for me as I usually travel so much. Wherever I go, I always carry the most essential component of my studio - the laptops with me. My backpack is always very hefty because it is stuffed with laptops (usually 2 in the same bag) and multiple hard drives. I use these to create most of my works. But in general, I'm not super rigorous about planning my studio routine. I often forget meals and bedtimes when immersed in animating my projects.

Nonetheless, your question resonates a lot with our current situation. This year, both of the viral and political pandemics make me wonder if the idea of a "typical day" still exists, as we have all witnessed the elapse of the old normality. While we are still deeply in the midst of the crisis, the discussion and imagination of the "new norm" have emerged, and the act of imaging the "new norm" became the new normality itself in day to day life. The outlook of new normality says that things are not normal now. But it also makes us question what should be considered normal. I believe this challenging era is activating much more inspiration for creativity than usual. It leads us to find new ways to evaluate our existing system and confront society's hidden problems. A greater unknown future puts us in a constant act of becoming. I think this itself is a positive thing.

What criteria do you follow for selecting materials? Do you prefer to maintain a narrow focus or work across diverse media? How do you navigate the limitations and possibilities that result from this path?
3D animation has been the primary tool to help me realize most works. Digital rendering and editing are usually the most time-consuming parts of my creative processes. While there are always new possibilities to be discovered in such media, I'm not restricted by it either. Many of my projects often begin with 3D animation, but they do not stall there. They are often extended through other media, such as installation or sculptures. On the other hand, the understanding of the problematics of the media is essential to me. Since the age of mechanical reproduction, new media has played a crucial role in re-defining our visual culture and our ways of seeing. Despite the tedious rendering process, it is very easy to get alluring images through CGI simulations and special effects. They often allow me to produce exciting results in a "combined reality", but it is also easy to take it for granted and approach it as a fetish.

The media technology is a key actor in creating phenomenons such as hyperreality, Spectacle and commodification, post-truth, deep-fake, etc. Figures such as Benjamin, Baudrillard, Debord, Deleuze, Stiegler, Haraway, Mcluhan (and many more) have profound discourses around the topics. My interest in theories helps me to approach the media with a critical mind. Media technology tends to manifest very specific values through the user. For me, it's an interesting constant battle of utilizing the media while not letting its consumerism nature dominate me as the creator. 

I always use the metaphor of "Walking on the edge of the cliff" to describe the particular way of working with media technology. The view on the edge is the most imposing, but the "antagonist" (which in this case is the tool one uses) never stops trying to push one off the cliff… I don't want to make a simple dichotomy between art and industry here. But just for me, 3D animation has never been an industry. It has always been an art form.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?
This year has been unprecedented. I had a pretty unforgettable experience of being stuck in Berlin from January through July. I first went there for a short-term artist in residency and then found out that I could not leave because of the pandemic lock-down and its consequential flight cancellations. My flights were canceled six times in total. For quite a while, this prolonged stay felt pretty surreal, since I’ve spent most of my time staying indoors instead of going out to explore new things in a new city. It created a contradictory feeling, which at the time, my accommodation became very customary while its surroundings remained utterly foreign. This peculiar situation inspired me to create “The House of the Solitary.” I believe that this experience affected my creations at the time in good ways. Besides having to adapt the flight cancelations as a part of the new daily routines, I was deeply inspired by this unique stay in Berlin. And the lock-down period itself was actually quite good for the sake of productivity. I think solitude is always a part of an artist’s life, and art possesses the power to make one feels enriched in solitary.

In a time that seems to be marked by uncertainty, collective anxiety, and increasing social unrest, why do you think the perspectives and contributions of artists remain meaningful? Do you feel a natural relationship exists between your work (or the role artists play more broadly) and confronting established systems - of power, cultural institutions, or otherwise?
My existential position as a multicultural individual made me investigate the questions related to nomadism. My projects explore identity in flux through a post-anthropocentric approach. The investigation of stateless characters, inclusivity/exclusivity, and “otherness” are essential to my works. And through poetic languages, they pose questions to the established systems and our understanding of the world. My recent research interest mainly focuses on Nomadic studies, post-humanism, and Object-Oriented Ontology. It does not only resonate with my migratory experience but also reflects the dilemma we are facing. During the pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions of “Exile and Creativity,” and I have done a couple of projects that explore uncertainty as a breeding ground for new possibilities (“Moscow Has Nice Weather” and the “Mind Maps of World Traveling”). The world is unstable, the established system is breaking down, and our current state in liminality makes everything new to us. For example, we observed how people can possess power over authoritative power through many recent social movements in both China and America. It pushes us to stop being “self-quarantined” in the center of the world and look at the status quo and history otherwise.

During this process, artists make essential contributions to a hopeful alternative future by documenting and displaying, contemplating and questioning the status quo through creative works. Simultaneously, I think digital moving-image becomes an effective vehicle for artists to depict these transformations due to the power of reproduction and rapid distribution.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works - from visual art, literature, film, or music - that are important to you? I started looking at Artsy and Mousse as a daily habit to keep me informed of the art world and for inspirations. One of the good things about the internet is you will never run out of exciting things to look at when staying indoors. Jodorowsky and Tarkovsky are a couple of my favorite filmmakers, among many other great ones. There are too many good books. It’s going to be a long list… I recently read many writings by folks like Vilém Flusser, Rosi Braidotti, Sara Ahmed, Kenneth Gross, etc. I often listen to music by Kurt Stenzel, Brian Eno, Philipe Glass, Hans Zimmer when working in the studio. In terms of classical music, I like the Russian composer Prokofiev. These are the things I can listen to while working without being distracted too much. Old Blues music has also greatly influenced me. Actually, I played one of Elizabeth Cotton’s old songs in a recent piece titled “BIRDS - Volume I.”

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory?
I was very fond of a solo exhibition of Bjørn Melhus at Kindl Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin. I saw the show in February before all the museums were shut down there. The works in the exhibition really speak to me, and the images and sound still pop up on my mind often. Although there haven’t been many opportunities to see shows physically this year, this particular one is easily the top-rated in my recent memory.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?
Right now, I'm preparing myself to fully dive into the production of a new multi-channel video piece titled the "BIRDS - Volume II." It will be tons of 3D animating, so I need to be mentally ready for that. Once I'm in the mold, then it's hard to get me to stop. Besides, I just keep writing about new ideas and making some fun sculptures with 3D printing and various casting materials. These sculptures are all derived from my animation works. In terms of what's coming up next, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my solo show next January at Vanguard Gallery Shanghai. I was also awarded a fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, an Artist in Residency in Spain as a part of the AFIAS Award by Spain Moving Image Festival, and ISCP Summer Residency in Brooklyn. At this point, none of these activities has a fixed starting date yet. I'm eager to find out what happens next, and at the same time, stay flexible in my timelines and embrace the unknown future.