"Like a snippet of an overheard conversation in passing, each of the paintings provide a piece of a narrative or a fleeting feeling made physical within Wang's compositions. Largely devoid of human figures, their work often feels like the viewer has just arrived in the instant everyone has left - cigarette butts or a lingering trail of smoke trailing behind."
"Wang's work beautifully balances emotive, painterly gestures and grounded tightly rendered moments to give the viewer a glimpse of a story. Scenes of suburban Los Angeles engulfed in overgrown, abstracted vegetation echo the painterly marks of embers and flame. Intimate still lives depict bedrooms and living spaces displaying vibrant, multi-faceted portraits of their inhabitants just out of frame. Thrumming with energy from the discomfort of change, Wang's visual world offers a sharp wit and sensitivity."
Catherine Wang's expressive paintings juxtapose overgrown, abstracted vegetation and suburban built spaces to evoke tension between joy, danger, melancholy, and exuberance. Paintings balance emotive, painterly gestures with tightly rendered details to suggest fragments of narrative, often omitting figures so spaces feel recently vacated. Intimate still lifes of bedrooms and living rooms present traces of inhabitants through cigarette butts, smoke, graffiti, and litter. Chromatic, frenetic canvases capture movement—piñatas blurring against eerily lit trees, embers carried by Santa Ana winds—conveying a sense of impending change tempered by levity, wit, and sensitivity. Work channels the exhilaration and foreboding of young adulthood.
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