verse
Exhibition

Aluan WangAutomatic Messages

Verse is delighted to present Automatic Messages, the latest series by Aluan Wang, in a presentation curated by Haiver.

The first time I saw Aluan Wang’s Automatic Messages it felt like a whisper, gentle strokes diffusing into the canvas like a breath of wind cool upon the cheek.

The abstract textures of each curated, code-based piece evoke everything from handmade paper to swimming underwater to the indecipherable scrawlings of some obscure, old-world god.

Building on techniques from his prior projects like Turner Light and After the Cave, Wang has designed an algorithmic system that emulates nature. Yet for each incredible configuration from flowers to ferns, algae to ivy, it’s simply math in all its beauty.

‘The only difference in the code between the different forms is a difference in a mathematical function — just variations between sin, cos, atan, and tan.’

Aluan Wang

*Automatic Messages*, Output detail, 2023

Automatic Messages, Output detail, 2023

The beauty of abstract art is often in the eye of the beholder; from a constellation of experiences, each individual sees something slightly different in the work. The hundred images that make up Automatic Messages remind me of the flowers my grandmother used to press and frame to hang on her walls in rural Virginia. But it’s a sleight of hand, a trick of the code, that lets us substitute one image for another.

‘Everyone has different imaginations about shapes. Indeed, I designed leaves or flowers into the framework, but it's not that I aim to portray leaves, it's more that their grouping and positioning align with natural structures.’

Aluan Wang

*Automatic Messages*, Output, 2023

Automatic Messages, Output, 2023

*Automatic Messages*, Output, 2023

Automatic Messages, Output, 2023

*Automatic Messages*, Output, 2023

Automatic Messages, Output, 2023

Equally compelling within those structures is Wang’s use of texture to blend his line work, composed of thousands of tiny dots, seamlessly into a haunting, ethereal background. When combined with his understated use of color, and the way every mark has its place and yet is one with the whole, the final pieces are a quiet triumph of the organic and digital resting together in perfect harmony.

‘By using dots, I can blur the originally sharp boundaries to give it more of a human feel.’

Aluan Wang

*Automatic Messages*, Output detail, 2023

Automatic Messages, Output detail, 2023

For those that know his work, none of this comes as a surprise. Aluan Wang is a prolific and award-winning Taiwanese artist of immense talent who has been working in digital art for nearly fifteen years with both experimental audio/visual pieces, as well as generative code based systems. But even after all his time in this space he still finds delight in the process of collaborating with the machine.

‘The myriad of possibilities driven by algorithms often astounds even me as the author…I’m left in a state of anticipation for the unforeseen solutions it will uncover.’

Aluan Wang

Curatorial statement by Haiver

Artist

Aluan Wang

Born in 1982 in Taichung, Taiwan, Aluan Wang is an artist and creative coder. He started his career in interactive design, working as a creative designer on large-scale installation artworks. He is known within the audiovisual scene in Taiwan, where he merges geometric visuals with the dynamic rhythm of electronic breakbeat music.

His practice uses algorithms and rules to create a vibrant and...

View artist profile
Curator

Haiver

An artist and curator, Haiver is the artistic director of Alba.art.

He edits the on-chain publication fxGems, combing through every project on fx(hash) to find and celebrate the platform’s best generative art. He’s worked as a fine art photographer and filmmaker, and has taught both disciplines at a college in New York.

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