Hengyu Wang — CalArts Post Grad Show Y25

Hengyu Wang

(Photo/Media MFA 25)
IG: @hengyuw1.0

Perception, Projection, Progression (video excerpt), 2025

Living independently since a young age, Hengyu Wang’s practice is rooted in endurance, repetition, and control, often reflecting the rigorous structure of long-distance running and Stoic philosophy. Wang uses photography and documentation to confront fears around mortality, responsibility, and what it means to persist. By photographing every meal for extended durations, Wang creates an overwhelming accumulation of images that becomes at once tedious, repetitive, and revealing — making visible the nature of eating when stripped of social ritual, aesthetic presentation, or culinary pleasure. Further, the iteration leans subtly, slowly, towards a goal, to reveal the meaning inherent in daily rituals as they are recorded and archived. Wang’s video projection continues his food documentation process, capturing thoughts and memories, and trauma through six months of photographing every meal he consumed. The images, paired with dry, self-deprecating captions and candid audio from conversations with close friends, reveal a tension between a structure that provides stability and the exquisite moments of surrender that allow for flexibility. The video format allows multiple elements — images, captions, audio — to layer and sequence temporally, creating rhythm that mirrors the daily repetition while also allowing for variation and moments of system ‘breakdown’, subtly revealing the arbitrary nature of the system itself. This work marks a shift in Wang’s practice by introducing humor and spontaneity as counterweights to rigid systems of self-regulation. Perhaps discipline alone cannot provide meaning.

PROXY CHIMERA ORACLE

CalArts 2025