On two monitors, side by side, we see meditations on water and air. On the left, the bubbles from a glass of sparkling water rise, and on the right, raindrops gently roll down a pane of window glass. The sound is a hypnotic hum from each source; the gentle fizz of the carbonated drink and the popping sizzle of the rain outside. Together, an atmospheric drone accompanies the scene. Close cropped in each instance, it is easy to assert a visual equivalence. But the meditative tone, the invitation to really look, allows us to quietly dwell on the disparity, and the difficulty of comparison. A bubble is a globule of a gas in a liquid. A raindrop is a globule of liquid in a gas. A raindrop is filled with water, while a bubble is filled with air. The gas rises on the left, the water falls on the right. The fizzing is the sound of the bubbles exuberantly popping into non-existence, the sizzling is the sound of raindrops being formed into existence as they collide with the ground. A duality exists but it offers an unexpected dichotomy, a troubling equivalence that asks for your attention. These allusions to water belie a larger interest in ideas of transformation. Structural changes in the nature of things appear before us and implicate us - a cognitive input is required in the construction of meaning and understanding. The fluidity of form, the slippery nature of being and knowing is brought to our attention. Wong has frequently drawn from the motif of rain and water - the escaping energy produced in its transformation and construction.

Ideas of precipitation, flow and transferral likened to language itself where these acts of becoming from nothing, and the expulsion of energy in their dissipating and distribution, align with speech act theory and the sharing of knowledge. In this simple observational gesture, the phenomenon of rain and water’s precarious relationship to its own state of being is held in a poetic parallel to the construction of meaning through linguistics and communication. Placing a natural and a man-made phenomenon side by side asks us to question what drives transformation and consider the post-structuralist nature of how meaning is made in language. In Falling In Reverse, the mirrored, reversed, and contradictory display of two transforming states in dialogue reveals to us that language is not a fixed vessel of meaning but a mutable system of signs whose significance emerges only through context, difference, and the viewer’s active cognitive investment. It requires interpretation, accommodation, and an openness to transformation rather than resolution.