For multidisciplinary artist Oscar Wang, what he’d like spectators to remember from Tuesday’s show of Chinese sportswear giant Li-Ning at the Pompidou Center isn’t just the set — it’s the philosophy behind it.
Titled “My-Verse” in English, the concept is at once a reference to the metaverse and a Chinese proverb that translates to “I have my own space, I have my own world.” And that’s exactly the kind of double-entendre, bicultural wordplay that Wang enjoys.
The set will feature a series of doorways in styles ranging from ancient and stately to modern and industrial, with shapes alluding to traditional Chinese architecture. Each will be a “portals blurring the physical and digital — through time and space, from Beijing to Paris,” a voyage that he hopes will also resonate with Paris’ international audience.
But helping Eastern and Western sensibilities find common grounds for creation has been at the center of much of the career of 33-year-old Wang, who is the son of renowned Taiwanese actress and director Silvia Chang.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Wang went on to study at London’s Chelsea College of Art, a global upbringing that required him to smoothly shuttle between both cultures, collecting what he saw as connecting points with a magpie-like sensibility.
Next he headed to Shanghai, where he opened Open Work Studio, a multidisciplinary creative practice through which emerged projects such as dressing Airpods for Stella McCartney in an animal-inspired design, interpreting Fendi’s Peekaboo for the bag’s 10th anniversary, or giving life to the Fendidi family, a quartet of panda figures created for the Roman fashion house in 2018 and brought to life in China online and offline.
During the pandemic, he also launched Earthling Collective, a budding fashion label in which he wants to explore the commonalities between people and cultures. And if that wasn’t enough, he has made inroads in hospitality with popular Shanghai destinations such as Loam Yard, a café and bar located near the city’s West Bund contemporary art center.
Most recently, Wang unveiled during Art Basel Hong Kong the “Dōngxī Teapot,” a collaboration with American artist Daniel Arsham that saw the pair produce a classical Chinese teapot in rare Yixing clay, adorned with a blueprint-inspired design that describes the different elements and dimensions involved in its creation. Here, too, Wang’s playing on words, as Dōngxī means both “East-West” and “object.”
“I wanted this concept to be brought to life so that [non-Chinese] people can understand Chinese culture in a cool way,” said the Shanghai-based artist. “Tea is something that you can enjoy, relax with and it’s also trans-cultural.”
But Li-Ning’s Paris show marks the first time Wang is working on a global project with the China-based label.
“It’s been interesting because I’ve been doing so many projects for the West from the East, so working on a project with a big [Chinese] company with my concept was an interesting play to see how it differentiates,” he said. “There are some interesting concepts I’d never thought about but putting them in perspective gave me a better understanding of what youth likes, what youth wants.”
He credits his international upbringing with making him “easily adaptable to ideas” rooted in Eastern as well as Western culture, making his role akin to that of a translator by helping teams on both ends of the cultural spectrum understand each other.
“It’s interesting to see when the Western team is having a hard time understanding the Chinese aspect while I totally get what they’re saying, and vice versa,” he said. “Being able to switch [from one frame of reference to the other] like channels is quite crucial in in modern-day creativity, because the quicker you can adapt and come up with ‘strange’ concepts, the more creative you become.”
Source: WWD