Over the past several years, Alice Wang has been working with the mantra that the Earth is plummeting towards the Sun while just missing it. The facts in this statement describe both our lived reality and an apocalyptic miracle conjured by the imagination. 

Bringing together physics, geology, astronomy, and ecology with phenomenology, Eastern metaphysics, and the practice of meditation and yoga, Wang examines ontological questions related to the nature of being through a materialist conceptual approach in the exploration of sculpture — a medium apt for metaphysical inquiries.

Through research and visits to geological and ancient sites as well as technological facilities — the Denali National Park in Alaska, the Tibetan plateau, the San Andreas Fault line, the Arctic Circle, SpaceX, Biosphere2, and the Mayan Pyramids, Wang investigates the uncanny dimensions of the natural world. 

Using sensitive plants, moss, fossils, meteorites, metals, water vapor, heat, wind, beeswax, and other metamorphic substances, her work explores the material consciousness of sculptural forms. From the cosmic to the geologic to the molecular, matter — like relic radiation leftover from the Big Bang, corpses of prehistoric organisms that turned to stone, or wax secreted from the glandular abdomens of bees — reveal certain underlying forces in nature. 

Sculpture is a time-based medium whose form not only unfolds in time, but in Wang's work, it also embodies a temporality through its material constitution. Working with byproducts of the metabolic process of the universe, forms shape-shift and time travel within different timescales. The physical boundaries of the work are not limited to its visible dimensions.

Wang combines scientific, technological, mythical, and spiritual perspectives to see how matter can be understood to embody existential qualities. Wang chooses materials that convey the sentient universe through sensual, tactile, and metaphoric means, and imagines how the nature of reality can be expressed through the language of sculpture and film.

Pyramids and Parabolas II is the second installment of an infinite film series Wang began in 2017, which explores our relationship to the natural world by examining how we communicate with the unknown universe through geometric structures. 

The idea of an infinite film series allows each episode to take on a looseness and autonomy in order to experiment freely with the serial form. From collage, to essayist, to abstract, each installment of the series assumes a different genre, which can be independent of the others — while at the same time, the episodes all-together form a total work of art with a common theme and interconnected narrative threads. As the series unfolds, Pyramids and Parabolas will shape shift and take on a life of its own. New ideas and formal experiments may emerge from the openness of the film form that is not predetermined.

The first episode established the groundwork for the dialectic between the pyramidal structure of ancient monolithic architecture and the parabolic shape of modern radio telescopes. Featuring found dash-cam footage of the apocalyptic fireball that came crashing down from outer space into Chelyabinsk, Russia, Pyramids and Parabolas started with a bang that signaled our precarity in the cosmos as a vulnerable planet amidst powerful natural forces. Our relationship to nature is not just what is on Earth; we live in a nature that is largely inhospitable to humans and other living organisms.

Calling attention to the body in order to foreground the experiential aspects of the film, the second episode of Pyramids and Parabolas begins with a three-minute body scan meditation in the dark. Followed by a quote from the Three Body Problem, “Three days from now, between three and five in the morning, the entire universe will flicker for you” — which acts almost like a spell, the film is a travelogue of the artist journeying through surreal and sublime landscapes in nature. Bookended by the building of a NASA JOVE radio telescope in Twentynine Palms, California, the collage film is the artist’s quest to touch the cosmos and connect with the universe through flesh.