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‘If Rothko polished the world to an icy emptiness, Annie Hsiao-Wen Wang tunes it to melodic perfection.’
– David Bromfield –
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Annie Hsiao-Wen Wang was born in Taiwan in 1979, growing up in her grandfather’s factory on the outskirts of Taipei. At the age of 10, she moved to Perth, Western Australia with her family. She graduated from university with a double degree in Physics and Mechanical Engineering, and worked for several years in the mining industry before eventually realizing her true calling in the arts. After completing a further degree in Contemporary Art, she now works as a full-time artist and author in her ancestral homeland: Taiwan.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Annie’s work has been exhibited in many cities including New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Taipei. A winner of prestigious awards such as the NAVA Ignition Prize and the Young Artist with Artitude Award, Annie has been included in high-profile exhibitions such as the internationally renowned Wynne Prize and the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her work and exhibitions have been widely documented by both Australian and international press, with many pieces included in public, private, and corporate collections around the globe.
Informed by her diverse cultural heritage, both aesthetically and philosophically, she is interested in using the language of pure abstraction to explore the sublime, the numinous, and the transcendental; evoking the shared, intimate, and universal human experience through the physical presence of paint. The creation of her paintings is led by both rational concerns of colour theory, surface quality and compositions, combined with the intuitive, emotional, and intangible process of the meditative practice. They are built slowly and over time, creating a sense of depth and luminosity upon which the viewer may step outside of the clutter of their busy contemporary lives in order to experience silence and contemplation.
Her deep interest in the inner life is also complimented by her fierce passion for our environment. Through sculpture and installations, she creates works that explore and address the dire issues of our planet, and how we, as human beings, relate to and affect the world around us.
Throughout her life and career, she has been driven by the same sense of yearning: a seeking for truth, for meaning. In the sciences it has been a searching for truth within the external physical world. In the arts, within the metaphysical and inner spiritual self; and a questioning of what it is to be a human being.
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Catalogues:
Somnium Catalogue, 2014
Out of the Blue Catalogue, 2014
Origins Catalogue, 2013
Within Silence Catalogue, 2013
Illume Catalogue, 2010
Discordant Natures Catalogue, 2009
Press:
Tatler Asia, 22nd October 2022
ARTouch (Taiwan), 22nd July 2022
Gina Studio Podcast (Taiwan), 14th July 2022
Yuan Magazine (Taiwan), Sep/Oct 2017
China Times (Taiwan), 3rd March 2017
This Month in Taiwan (Taiwan), February 2017
Belle magazine (Australia), November 2014
Annie Hsiao-Wen Wang’s Origins: Leaving Reason, Gaining Insight) – Art Collection + Design (Taiwan), Zheng Fang-He, July 2013
Merit Times (Taiwan), 18th July 2013
ArtCo – (Taiwan), August 2013
Abstract Origins – Asian Art News (Hong Kong), Vol. 23 No. 4 July/August 2013
Liberty Times (Taiwan), 28th July 2013
States of Mind – Asian Art News (Hong Kong), Vol. 21 No. 6 November/December 2011
Something for everyone – The West Australian, R. Spencer, 15th October 2010
Illuminating abstract – Asian Art News (Hong Kong), Vol. 20 No. 5 September/October 2010
Prayer on a g-string – The West Australian, R. Spencer, 18th September 2009
Uneasy bodies of work – The Wire Mag (Australia), J. Bahr, 10th September 2009
The West Australian – S. Bevis (Australia), 18th July 2009
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