PEARL C. HSIUNG: STANDARD PROJECTION

Press Release

Pearl C. Hsiung, Volcanic Ash, 2010 & HELLO, 2009 & Red Sky at Morning, Sailor Take Warning, 2008

Hsiung’s oddly mesmerizing work can be at times equally difficult to watch, as in Volcanic Ash, featuring a close up of the artist’s teeth, blackened, while she sings. Filled with trippy imagery, and lighthearted sci-fi undertones, Hsiung’s videos (the artist is also the star) bring various elements and themes of her paintings to life.

Pearl C. Hsiung's painting, drawing and video works explore states of physical, psychical and metaphysical metamorphosis. Often these transformations play out in anthropomorphizing landscapes verging on portraiture, where the geological and biological collide and collapse, raising questions about the nature of nature. Hsiung's video works bring these ideas out into an order of social space, beyond the pictorial plane, to further investigate the mediation of social life, nature and constructed images in an endlessly transforming universe. Pearl C. Hsiung received her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles (1997) and her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London (2004). Hsiung has had solo exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College (2011); Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2007, 2010); and Max Wigram Gallery, London (2006). Hsiung's work has been featured in group exhibitions including Made In L.A. 2012, Hammer Museum, Westwood; Bitch Is The New Black, Honor Fraser, Los Angeles (2009); Acclimatation, Villa Arson, France (2008); Humor Us, Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery (2007); 2006 California Biennial and Disorderly Conduct: Art in Tumultuous Times (2008) both at the Orange County Museum of Art; 2006 Busan Biennale, South Korea and Expander, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, London (2005).