Essex Flowers, New York 7 January – 5 February
I visit Essex Flowers on a particularly gusty Sunday afternoon, the kind that makes the gallery’s quiet noticeable as the door shuts behind me. Yet the space isn’t entirely silent – low murmurs beckon me to come in further. The installation inside is minimal: at the far end of the gallery, a videowork – the source of the murmurs – loops on a vintage ±² that plays from atop a tall pedestal; a few socially distanced prints depicting a computer-animated boyish figure occupy the walls either side.
Despite the unassuming appearance of Poyen Wang’s exhibition, it has a gravitational pull. Images of the same boyish figure flash across the monitor, who contorts and crams themself into the various niches of a raintinted studio apartment: into a refrigerator, oven, sink or cabinet. As I come face-to-face with the pliable hide-and-seeker, the character’s ‘confessions’ finally become audible: “I hold grudges… I’m shy… I have endearing insanity…”
The eponymous 2022 work seduces and repulses in equal measure. The comforting thought of waiting out the rain with this companion soon gives way to doubt as unmistakable horror tropes begin to play out: flickering red lights, sounds of shattering glasses, a closeup shot of the character caressing a kitchen knife. Their monologue bubbles with lust (“seeking / more / meat / love”) and hints of narcissism (“I think I am cute”) as they teleport across the apartment, their bruised and bloodied body magnifying or shrinking with each shot.
While Wang’s previous works often deal with nostalgia and the passage of time, Endearing Insanity inhabits a temporality that’s stranded on “just another rainy Sunday afternoon”, apt for “wasting time”, as its protagonist admits. The unbearable boredom of a protracted present compels one to encounter and confront oneself. Through his shapeshifting surrogate, Wang heightens the mundane melodrama of watching one’s own ego balloon and deflate, as if from a third-person perspective.
One may associate such temporality and introspection with the ¶·²¸¹-19 pandemic, which for two years suspended the future in uncertainty and left us, mostly, to deal with ourselves. (It also speaks to the condition of late-stage capitalism that places the responsibility of securing a future squarely on the individual person – further atomising contemporary societies.) But the work hints at a possible remedy: embracing ‘alone time’ as an opportunity to acknowledge our base desires and other monstrous and unwieldy parts of ourselves. Endearing Insanity’s emotional content – even its abjection – is entirely relatable: the longing and loathing, desiring and cringing, and the sudden self-awareness of caught being sentimental on a Sunday afternoon. Kevin Wu