Al Wong
Nacimiento : , San Francisco
Historia
I am a native San Franciscan artist and have spent the past 45 years making art in a variety of mediums. Painting has always been a central element in my work because of the direct nature of working with the materials. My career has developed from my early years as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute where I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree, to serving as an Art Professor for over 30 years at several universities and colleges including the San Francisco Art Institute, the California State University system and Mills College. I have shown at exhibition venues such as the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the UC Berkeley Museum & Pacific Film Archive. My work has toured nationally and internationally including Europe, South America and Japan. In addition, I have received several awards and honors including an NEA Grant in 1983, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986, and a Flintridge Foundation Visual Artist Award in 1997.
Director
This work is a response to the Chinese Exclusion Act which was in enacted in the U.S. during the years of 1882-1943. This prohibited immigration on the basis of race. One of the only ways for families to come across was to become "paper" relatives of those who had legal status. This video montage expresses the emotions and turmoil these individuals endured.
Director
The concern here is to try to make the space between the wall and the puddle to be connected. The image of the person on the wall picking up pebbles and tossing it to the area of the puddle having ringlets of water appearing.
Director
Black and White Video Installation | Sound
Director
Black and White Video Installation | Sound
Director
Black and White Video Installation | Silent
Director
This film deals with filming (taking) and (giving) projecting into the same space of present and past.
Director
I first started by taking a black 16mm film leader and holding a magnifying glass above the film. I then used the sunlight to burn each frame in the film leader. At the same time that I was burning the film leader, I was also filming the process of burning each frame. After developing the film, I then physically burned each frame with a soldiering iron in the exact same area that it was burned by the sunlight. The result was that when projected, one would see the filming of the burn at the same time one sees a single frame action of the physical burning of the film, followed by other concepts dealing with 24 frames. 24 frames make one second and this gives the illusion of smoothness. However, because each frame was burned, it gives an animated impression together with the smoothness of 24 frames.
Director
While working as a delivery driver, artist Al Wong became captivated by the meditative qualities of the looping roads around San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. But rather than a simple documentation of these journeys, this long-form structural film utilises Wong’s conceptual explorations to create a stunning, sensual work of pure cinema that continually upends our perceptual expectations. On the soundtrack, we hear the continual lapping of ocean waves. A student of the legendary Sōtō Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Al Wong here creates a film which perfectly symbolises the endless cycles discussed in Zen Buddhist philosophy. A monumental, largely-unseen masterwork 1970s avant-garde film, Twin Peaks has been restored in 16mm by the Pacific Film Archive and will be screened outside of the United States for the first time at Sheffield DocFest.
Director
This film depicts the cycle of the City of San Francisco, as one proceeds through a day of work.
"One of Kuchar’s few feature-length works is this ribald pastiche to postwar Hollywood melodrama, that period when the studios were trying very hard to be adult. The intricate, overheated plot involves a nurse trapped in an unhappy marriage who escapes the big city in search of greener pastures in Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma. Swerving from earnest homage to dark satire, Kuchar simultaneously imitates and savages the legacy of Sirk, Preminger and Minnelli that inspired him, gleefully intertwining the suggestive and the scatological, while also pointing towards the later postmodern parodies of Cindy Sherman. The Devil’s Cleavage is also a rich time capsule of 1970s San Francisco, replete with cameos from Curt McDowell and Art Spiegelman." —hcl.harvard.edu
Director
Al Wong’s Same Difference was composed over the course of a year, a 16mm camera set up on a tripod in the artist’s kitchen capturing views of the San Francisco hills through a large double window. Artist Ursula Schneider sits on a chair underneath the window, her presence and stillness an essential part of the work. With Schneider’s body in the centre of the frame, Wong shot freely at different times of day and night, cloudy or empty skies, and experimented with in-camera effects and editing to compose complicated choreographies of light, clouds and atmosphere.
Director
Black and White Video Installation | Sound
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16mm Film by Al Wong.
Director
This film depicts a man in search of a relationship. However, after experiencing a number of situations, he realizes that the true relationship is with himself.
Director
The objective is to show myself visiting myself, and then showing the frustration of loneliness, by trying to be with myself. –Al Wong
Director
16mm Film by Al Wong.
Director
Developing a new friend sometimes comes with discovering surprises. In this film, I experience when a personality changes so quickly that it appears to be two personalities.
Director
16mm Film by Al Wong.
Director
16mm Film by Al Wong.
Director
16mm Film by Al Wong.
