Ian Tung
© Ian Tung

Growing Pains

2025

Fabric, paint and cardboard over wire and paper mâché


This installation is a physical representation of my relationship with my brother, and how it has evolved from our younger years to present day, with me preparing to leave home and him about to start high school. My most ambitious project yet, I expanded scale and experimented with new materials to evoke the ebb-and-flow of familiarity and estrangement over time. While the abstracted figures appeal to a universal sense of nostalgia and childhood whimsy, they morph and stretch across twin winding trails to ultimately grow distinct. The work mirrors how even my gesture of reaching out for my brother has grown unpredictable as he navigates his own path.

Entangled

Like my other works that explore gender in the natural world, I modeled this piece after the symbiotic transformation that anglerfish undergo during mating. Female and male anglerfish appear almost as members of entirely different species. The female, radically larger than the male, sports the iconic lure and huge gaping maw. The male’s only function is to provide genetic information for reproduction during which the two physically attach and transform into a single being – their vital systems combine to circulate together. Although their species is an extreme case of sexual dimorphism, I was interested in portraying the visceral beauty in a non-anthropic exchange and a reinterpretation of sex, gender, and individuality.

Read Me, Feed Me


2023

Paper, Wire, and Masking Tape

5" x 13"


One of my many passions is writing. As someone who considers prose and poetry deeply personal, I wanted to visualize the feeling of sharing my work with others, thereby extending to them something from the deepest part of me. I chose heart imagery to represent this vulnerable, yet very alive and beating, core of myself. In my experience reading books, I consume words and they stick with me, much like the lingering taste of a dish. This piece is a love letter in some ways, torn and pasted together, seeking to embrace and celebrate the rawness that comes with sharing the tender insides of ourselves through art.

Wings of Weathered Wood

2025

Cardboard, Kraft paper, packing tape

Approx 6FT in length


Created for my sculpture class at NYU’s Summer Art Intensive, this

“wearable” project, crafted from cardboard, focused on durability -

conceptually heavy-duty, poseable wings worn like armor.

Though my materials were commonplace – packing tape, Kraft paper and

cardboard – I pushed myself in executing advanced building techniques. For the

wings to be moveable from the main “bone” down, I employed a ball-socket

mechanism, assembled from a small knob of paper within a tube attached to the

chest piece, thus allowing elements of the piece to move freely and

independently.


Chamber of Reflection

2023

Resin, Wire and Yarn


This piece visualizes the chaos of thoughts and depicts a feeling of spiraling out of control. The sculpted face wears a passive, neutral expression – representative of the public mask we put on as we go about our daily lives, careful not to let the private streams of overflowing consciousness slip through. The concentrated light draws the viewer’s attention to the multicolored ruckus above thus becoming a statement about what goes on beyond our perception and the commotion we all carry with us.