Catherine Wang — CalArts Post Grad Show Y25

Catherine Wang

(Art MFA 25)
IG: @c_y_uu

Better, 2025

Catherine Wang’s installation explores zones of entanglement between wild and built spaces in Southern California, creating environments of impending doom inflected with gallows humor. Wang describes being fascinated by how we construct stories about our environments, investigating narratives around place that characterize Los Angeles as both apocalyptic and utopic. In the suburbs, artifice is presented as natural even as plants spill into bedrooms and manicured dynamic landscapes are punctuated violently by signs of human activity. Suburbia is often staged as a site of anxiety and humor, where both artistic and utilitarian elements (vinyl fences, goldfish crackers, hammers, small oil paintings, fire extinguishers) exist, or persist under threat of environmental and social collapse. The fence—symbol of property, boundary, domestic security—here becomes a sculptural element within a larger composition that includes painted wall and casted shadow, creating spatial depth through theatrical scene setting. By playing with perspective, light, and scale, Wang evokes the feeling of living in places where apocalypse always seems imminent, yet daily life continues with its rituals of decoration and boundary-making.

PROXY CHIMERA ORACLE

CalArts 2025