Alice Wang: Windstorm on Saturn, Basalt Columns, MDMA, Serotonin

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) presents Alice Wang: Windstorm on Saturn, Basalt Columns, MDMA, Serotonin, the artist’s first New York institutional solo exhibition. Wang’s films, sculptures and prints probe mysteries of the natural world, tracing connections between the known and the unknown through a scientific, speculative, and diaristic lens. This exhibition brings together new ceramic sculptures, the artist’s film Space Analogs: Pyramids and Parabolas III (2024) and recent experiments with meteorites.

Join ISCP for the Opening Reception on Tuesday, February 17 from 6–8pm.

Wang transforms the gallery into a quiet landscape that reflects on the intelligence of nature, with the hexagon as the central form. Fascinated by its highly efficient geometry, she finds inspiration in hexagonal patterns that recur across vastly different scales: from the decades-long storm cloud on Saturn’s North Pole, to the crystallization of basalt columns on Earth, and down to the molecular structures of MDMA and serotonin, all key references in her recent work. Her ceramics take on this omnipresent shape, evoking planetary geological formations while her prints of magnified meteorites offer an intimate view of actual remnants from the far depths of space.

Anchoring the installation, Wang’s film interweaves otherworldly vistas with personal reflections, including the story of her grandfather’s covert life as a Chinese spy. As she navigates harsh, alienating landscapes, Wang turns inward, exploring both physical and psychic terrain while seeking stability in the regularity of nature. As a whole, the exhibition urges us to think deeply about the elemental kinship between the body, Earth and the cosmos and our survival within a precarious, interconnected world.