Bo Wang’s work critically examines contemporary social structures derived from capitalist expansion and globalisms, often with a focus on trade, ideology, labor, and material histories in East Asia. Weaving between video and installation, his artworks reimagine physical spaces of modernity and their appointed cultural identities. Initially commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum in 2022, Fountain of Interiors visualizes an imaginary waterfall that interweaves Singapore’s tropical nature, its ubiquitous manmade system of climate control, and the fluorescent lights of its immigrant workers’ dormitories. The lightness and darkness of modernization, especially in its Asian context, have always gone closely handinhand. This new iteration of the work retells the stories of lighting and interior decoration industries, both of which were leading forces in Korea’s industrialization during the 1970s, satirizing and portraying the ironies of modern and urban life under the guise of industrial landscapes and artificial forms of life. The plastic flowers and fluorescent lights that constitute Wang’s fountain were purchased at Seoul’s Namdaemun Market and Euljiro lighting street.
