Drop Hole by Yuyu Wang is the first solo exhibition with Studio Gallery after her official representation. It is also one of the artist’s most significant solo exhibitions in recent years. From There in 2020 and Somatic Attunement in 2021 to Drop Hole, Wang has gradually established a complete set of techniques and expressions. The exhibition includes sculptures, paintings, and videos she created in the past five years, allowing the audience to collectively experience the tension between the fragility and strength intertwined in different works.

The title Drop Hole (Otoshiana), is derived from a garment draping technique—connecting two holes to form a tunnel-like structure. The more volume the silhouette of the skirt base has, the more three-dimensional the Otoshiana looks and the more it stands out.1 When the fabric is directly draped on the human body or mannequin, basic geometric shapes are transformed into new entities through cutting, folding, gathering, and stretching. Within these constructed surfaces, the imagination unfurls. A circular shape extending from the end connects to the one descending into the air; the drop hole is more like a gazing model. The gazing objects obtain information from visual and auditory senses, and part of the feeling and reverie generated by the act of looking. Wang’s artistic vision begins to take form through the synthesis of the model and her materials (fabric, bra, silicone, wood, iron wire, etc.).

Wang has consistently used sculpture as the core of her practice, connecting with installations, performances, paintings, and other mediums. Waste materials from the production of sculptures, scattered draft sketches, and everyday objects are transformed, absorbed, and integrated into her works. The extensive use of patchwork techniques in her works on canvas recombines time, materials, concepts, and fragments of memory. The confused and chaotic aura emanating from the human body that the artist attempts to capture corroborates and reproduces through the stitching of the time lag.

From exploring the body itself to creating body logic, Wang attempts to transform and convey her bodily perception as a human through materials and space. Everything starts with a circle—temporary circles in the performance interacting with the body, the continuous construction of circular structures in sculptures, and the circular traces in her sketched drafts. The scattered materials continuously gather and disperse within the circular framework, eventually merging into a point, emphasising the open process and declaring the completion of a particular stage.

Since 2020, Wang has combined women’s clothing–intimates and loungewear–with silicone and wire to create a hybrid composition. The four groups of sculptures presented in the exhibition have amore biological form, ranging from predominantly flesh tones to varying degrees of grey; different materials; combinations and repeated folding change spatial levels, shapes, and volumes. The ‘hidden’ sharp objects depict individual situations.

Wang immerses herself in the studio environment, observing and unconsciously following the organism (reptiles, etc.), brewing turmoil and explosive power in her prolonged manual work. The ‘bodies’ made of silicone, fabric, and metal in the artworks are both fragile and intimate nests, as well as the depiction of resistance and strength. In shaping and reconstructing forms, positive and negative shapes coexist and overlap; the essence is right before us.

1. Pattern Magic, Tomoto Nakamichi, 2010