Biography

DaZhou Wang, Bio-Buick Rega, 2011, Oil, 50” x 78”

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DaZhou Wang: Auto Clinic

A synthesis of two series, Auto Clinic encourages viewers to question where nature ends and technology begins—and where that leaves humanity. 

In his Bio-Series, the artist explores the connections between the internal engineering of machines and the people who create them. Bio-C_K 10 (2019) portrays the mangled wreckage of an automobile, it’s “chest cavity” damaged beyond repair. Electrical wiring transforms into arteries and we can see the engine-heart spill its “blood.” Is this not—Wang argues—just another kind of life?

Similarly, in his Series of Insect Cars, Wang blurs the lines between established “living” things (insects) and the beasts of steel we so rarely think about in the present (automobiles). Dragonflies, Caterpillars and (of course) Beetles morph into classic cars right in front of viewers’ eyes, begging the question: Are the two really so dissimilar? 

It is the artist’s hope that this exhibition will lead the public to question, explore, and challenge their beliefs about what constitutes life. 

While this is never guaranteed, Auto Clinic’s juxtaposition of the organic and the mechanical often makes the familiar seem strange—and the strange, familiar. In a world that continues to push the boundaries between the natural and the engineered, perhaps this is the first step toward reevaluating what we each consider to be “alive.”

Walter Wickiser Gallery