04/01/2026
Pink Butt/ Wet Dream of The City
Karis Huang
2023
Oil on Wood
The scene ultimately reveals how the neighborhood becomes a shifting mirror, reflecting not its own memories but the dreams imposed upon it, blurring the boundary between presence and performance. This piece began with a pink vintage Cadillac the artist found glowing under a lone streetlight in Chinatown, its glossy curves shimmering like a soft, impossible mirage. The car felt almost theatrical—an outsider’s fantasy staged against the everyday rhythms of the neighborhood. Its exaggerated “pink butt” exposed how Chinatown often becomes a screen for desire, nostalgia, and myth, absorbing images that were never its own. Yet the scene also revealed a quieter tension: the way real histories are overshadowed by what others want to see. Reflected neon signs ripple across the Cadillac’s surface, blending spectacle with displacement. The scene ultimately reveals how the Cadillac becomes a symbol of projected narratives, challenging us to reconsider how the neighborhood is framed, filtered, and endlessly rewritten by outside imaginations.
Study For Break
Karis Huang
2025
Oil on Canvas
This work is rooted in a blue-and-white porcelain cup the artist bought in Jingdezhen. She used it to drink wine, and one time accidentally broke it. The destruction of precious things feels like an internal curse, tied to a lasting current of anger and melancholy.
Karis Wong (Baoyi Huang, b. 1998, Shenzhen) () is a New York–based artist working primarily in oil painting, where desire, intimacy, and commodity imagery blur into one surreal surface. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently pursuing an MFA at Parsons School of Design. Her work draws from personal photographs, online images, and objects encountered in her daily movements through the city—souvenirs of dislocation, melancholy, and temporary fantasies.
Image courtesy of Dennis Ha.
