Catherine Wang (b.1998 Lakewood, CA) is interested in those moments where you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Her work cuts solemnity with flippant humor and approaches trivial scenes with a tender reverence. In combining painting with installation, she creates nested experiences of the work that complicates the viewer’s position in space. Wang’s practice draws heavily from the Southern California landscape in which she grew up. She earned her MFA from CalArts in 2025 and her BAS from Stanford University in 2022