“Atlas Portal” exhibition explores cultural identities by Poyen Wang and Kio Griffith at Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles October 12th, 2018 - January 4th, 2019 | Opening reception: October 12th, 2018 6-9pm (Artist talk + panel discussion starts at 7pm) (Los Angeles) Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles is proud to present “Atlas Portal” by two featured artists, Poyen Wang and Kio Griffith. From October 12, 2018 to January 4, 2019, the exhibition will feature the artists’ video narratives, objects and installation about identity roles within cultural circulations and informational exchanges. The artists both straddle dual cultural boundaries and changing social landscapes. As a portal into their private atlases, this exhibition will explore through an alternate window of personal post-cultural politics. Poyen Wang is from Taiwan, and currently a visiting artist at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica from October 1 to December 31, 2018. Wang’s practice primarily takes the form of video and installation, creating an immersive environment to evoke the viewers’ emotions and imaginations. The subject usually derives from a personal experience and then evolves into a broad research of the people or place Wang associated with, in order to explore the collective history and memory. Curated by Kio Griffith, “Atlas Portal” serves as a virtual guide and sensory reference for the ever transforming 21st century world: one that is metamorphosing from analog to digital; cross pollinating from eastern to western, northern to southern cultures; supernatural to hyper-virtual objects; and life’s lost and found knowledge to be logged in and archived as digital data. At the opening reception on October 12, Alma Ruiz, former senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), will join Wang and Griffith’s conversation, along with Peter Frank, an art critic, curator, and poet who was the Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum and an art critic for Angeleno magazine.