“An Animal Psychic Will Communicate With Fairgoer’s Pets at The Armory Show”

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – SEPTEMBER 06: Artist David Capra and his sausage dog, Teena, looking at the exhibit “Puppy” by Jeff Koons during a media preview for Making Art Public: 50 years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at Art Gallery Of NSW on September 06, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by James D. Morgan/Getty Images)

Giving voice to the silenced has long been a concern of art, from the Realist movement of post-revolution France and the 20th century muralists of Mexico, to body politics in performance art and video art from the last few decades.

Chicago-based artist Adrian Wong, however, has been interested in communicating with those silenced in biological sense, connecting with people’s deceased or, for his most recent project, their living pets. Emerging from an urge to discover the non-linguistic state beyond our physical and communicative realm, Wong initially began working with young children as a social scientist after receiving a graduate degree in psychology from Stanford University in 2003. Realizing, as he explained to Observer, that “human affect is something poorly-suited for examination through a scientific lens,” he changed gears, getting his MFA from Yale University.

“My studio practice focuses on fields that operate outside of the empirical sciences, such as feng shui and geomancy, energy manipulation, astral projection, sound healing, cromniomancy, and most recently alchemy,” he explained ahead of a solo presentation at Chicago-based Carrie Secrist Gallery’s booth at the Armory Show.  His project will be part of the fair’s Focus section, organized by Jamillah James, a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Presented during the 25th edition of New York’s quintessential art fair, Wong’s installation will center around his collaboration with telepathic animal communicator Lynn Schuster, who will sit down for half-hour readings with fairgoers to communicate with their pets, based on their photos.

“Self-representation and personal truths, revisionism and projecting other possibilities into the world,” are the section’s main threads, James explained Observer—and Wong’s psychic collaboration certainly fits. “The idea of animal communication and telepathically communing with a non-verbal entity connects to this idea of wanting to believe in something and manifesting it, materially, psychically, and emotionally,” she said. Though she admitted “The idea of it may be met with skepticism.”

Participants are made aware that Schuster’s observations have the potential to provide a basis for artworks by Wong, similar to those which will be on view across the booth, including photographs, sculptures and paintings that stem from the duo’s recent collaborative work. Wong responds to Schuster’s readings by creating a customized pet furniture, such as a dog house or cat tree, a portrait of the animal’s previous life, or a cosmic geometry wall installation in tune with the animal’s “spirit,” in an attempt to “reconcile the medium’s conversation with the pet in form.” At his Chicago studio, the artist creates the artwork in house, using software programs Sketchup and Rhino for his furniture sculptures and pet portraitists from across the country for the paintings.

Wong initially connected with Wisconsin-based Schuster when the artist heard about a three-legged missing dog, named George, which eventually became more of a “spiritual guide” than a subject. Wong’s next encounter with the medium was a personal, and heartbreaking, occasion, after the unexpected passing of his pet rabbit, Omar. The shock and following grief after a sudden loss prompted the artist to reconnect with the medium, whose communication with Omar revealed that the rabbit was a reincarnation of Snoopy, the childhood pet cat belonging to Wong’s wife.