The installation Confused: Sexual Views was part of a three-phase project that also included Confused [the videotape] and Confused [the performance]. It was produced just before AIDS had reached epidemic proportions. Twenty-seven individuals face the camera head-on as they speak about bisexuality, especially its more complex and engaging aspects, such as the relationship between sexuality, love, and friendship. Without mincing words, they challenge the conventions of behaviour and human relations conveyed by commercial film and television, and refute the myths surrounding the notion of romantic love. The intent here is to question the constrictive mores that sanction only one style of love, and to examine the many forms of desire and sexuality experienced in our culture, approaching them from a variety of perspectives.

Running In A Maze features an abstracted video of young women and men playfully chasing one another in a maze created by artist Charles Rea. The layering of architectural forms and spaces in conjunction with abstracted text creates a visual labyrinth in which multiple mirrored surfaces collide. Wong’s video documents Rea’s Mirror Maze, an installation consisting of symbols and patterns painted onto large convex security mirrors. The mirrored planes and cryptic text used to decipher information reference modern information systems and other myriad forms of technology. Splicing and fusing of architectural forms and transparent walls in this maze simulate an environment of reflected and reflecting surfaces that parallel Wong’s interest in discovering his own identity.

Dedicated to all who have risked climbing, and to those who have fallen by choice, circumstance or by accident. Mixing of original, found, and appropriated footage.

The artist records himself at home proudly indulging in the happiness of a drug (heroin and cocaine) inspired perfect day. The music of Lou Reed: Heroin and Perfect Day. Recorded on Sunday – edited on Monday. Be Happy.

’4′ originated as a collaborative performance by Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Annastacia McDonald and Jeanette Reinhardt as the S.S. Girls, following events and activities of the women’s daily lives on Main Street. The performance was produced by Paul Wong and co-sponsored by the Video Inn. ’4′ explores the lives and personalities of four women as described by one another in the style of a feuding dysfunctional family. ’4′ was developed as a multimedia performance, first staged at Western Front in 1980, then followed by a tour across Canada and into the USA. The scripted multimedia presentations were later adapted to a video work.

A skillful, sensual rendering of an intriguing performance orchestrated by the artist. Through a fog-laden atmosphere, iconic figures emerge to perform on a huge turntable. Our look at this garishly lit spectacle is mediated by the gaze of a female Red Guard. All flesh and brilliance, this tape appears to critique popular culture by robbing it of any ostensible content. Hollywood proverb says, beneath the surface of fake tinsel lies only the real tinsel – the detritus of our times.

Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.

"The VAG exhibition space was staged with a four walled cube, 8’X 8’ which was padded internally. The four walls and the open ceiling were monitored by video cameras. Wong entered the gallery, climbed a ladder and disappeared into the blue cube. Personally I was very uneasy about the work at this time. Knowing that [Kenneth] Fletcher was a close friend of Wong’s who had only months before committed suicide. I felt perhaps Wong would attempt his own cathartic self-mutilation as we all watched. As Wong’s slow pacing and wall assaulting became more intense the audience picked up the momentum of his energies. The intensity of the performance became overpowering. Not knowing how far Wong has planned his own movements, one began to wonder if he was indeed going to bash himself into unconsciousness as some observers had predicted." - Arthur Perry, Vanguard Magazine 1979

Based on slides shot in 1978 of the Austrian aktion artist Hermann Nitsch. Put away for 24 years, the color transparencies are spread out on a light table. The images are examined with a macro lens and captured with digital video. Not so much a reconstruction, or documentary of an event but a process of re-imagining. A hundred frames record a 12-hour, noon to midnight performance in an Roman amphitheatre in the center of Trieste in Northern Italy. Hermann Nitsch has been creating his unique rituals since the early 1970’s. The blood flows over naked bodies strapped on crosses, carried blindfolded, senses are tweaked with percussion sounds and blaring brass instruments. Religious iconography, operatic orchestrations of cast, crew, friends, and the public who eat, dance, drink.

Approx. 6000 images, 1000 still photographs a minute flash on and off the screen. A year of pictures mash into an intense viewing experience. Using the iphoto software, Last Year is the result of compiling all 2009 photographs from several different computer sources onto one central database. The images were put into ‘a chronology’ according to iphoto logic. Part journal, part diaristic we see Wong’s incessant recording of everyday life from Chinese New Year celebrations in Vancouver, Beijing Olympics, artists, art exhibitions, architecture, friends, family, New York streets, parties, music concerts, film festivals, Calgary Stampede, Pride Parade, Toronto moments.

A foreign landowner negotiates with the locals and oversees digging of a well on his property.

Inspired by the Australian Banyan tree commonly known as the Strangler Fig, the site-specific mash-up used appropriated material from popular culture related to strangulation, suffocation, hanging and auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Custer’s Last Stand. Sitting Bull Wins. Recorded in South Dakota.

Abandoned pool used by skateboarders. Remnants of former yacht club on the Salton Sea, Mojave Desert.

Ooooo Canada is a 30-minute edited version presenting highlights from the five-hour live webcast on February 13,2010. Ooooo Canada was the first in a series of five site-specific projects presented during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter games in Vancouver. The broadcast was co-hosted by Skeena Reece and Paul Wong. It is an alternative critique of corporate, mass, pop and nationalist culture in the 21st century. Reece and Wong provide illuminating, personal, political, aboriginal, and comedic perspectives.

"Paul Wong’s Mahjong is rooted in the visual and oral sensuality of the game–the saturated colours of green in the game pieces and table top, the characters and names, floral patterns and coloured numbers on the dice and game pieces. It is this rich iconography that allows the participants to invent their own rules and play the game according to the images at hand." - Jordan Strom

Projected onto 8’ weather balloon. Recorded at Joshua Tree National Park. Part of the Scorched series.

On the right stills and video of the 2009 Canadian Rockies International Rodeo in Strathmore, Alberta. On the left stills and titles/text of rodeo bronzes from the Glenbow’s collection. Wong’s work is an impressionistic portrait, which explores this alternative part of Alberta’s history. It is not meant to be a documentary/literal portrayal of the gay rodeo but rather it situates it in the context of the story of the west and the construction of identities. Wong’s work uses these frozen gestures to explore the complexities of gender and sexuality. In-relation-to the bronzes, the videos introduce movement to their very static image and highlighting our constantly evolving and shifting society.

In vertical split screen we see and hear two shifting views of the artist entering and exiting via a set of swinging doors. Going in and out of the light the top frame sees the performer in a wide shot, the bottom frame in medium range.

Two seminal moments of recent media history are presented side by side. The closing scene from the film Enter The Dragon* starring Bruce Lee are juxtaposed with the first segment from the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.