Usually, when I attempt to describe what’s so thrilling in regards to the artwork scenes in Hong Kong and China, I’ll say that artists right here appear to be asking far totally different questions than these within the US, or developing with utterly out-of-left-field methods of approaching a solution. Hong Kong–based mostly De Sarthe’s presentation, which options artists interrogating how modern social narratives intersect with new expertise, is an efficient instance of what I imply.
Mak2, who final yr had the buzziest work within the truthful’s Encounters part, returns with one other intriguing piece. For the brand new challenge, Residence Candy Residence Yard (2025), the conceptual artist produced a online game the place fairgoers can play as digital gold diggers. The extra individuals play the sport, and discover gold, the upper the worth rises for an accompanying suite of seven triptych work. These works, impressed by the online game The Sims 4, have been produced by commissioning sections from artists on Chinese language e-commerce platform Taobao. It’s a humorous metaphor for artwork’s consideration economic system: the extra common individuals listen, the extra the artwork is value, even when it’s the collectors that reap the rewards—or pay the worth. There are additionally unusual, dream-like work “by” Lov-Lov, an AI artist developed by artist Lin Jingjing. For the works, Lin meticulously re-created AI-generated photographs utilizing paint and airbrush, calling consideration to a extra fluid notion of creativity, the place the strains between creator, affect, and creation are removed from clear.
Not within the sales space, however introduced by the gallery to Encounters, is LuYang’s DOKU the Creator, a sensory overload of an set up that blends a video that includes LuYang’s digital avatar DOKU, with LEDs taking part in scrolling textual content and staging evocative of a storefront. There are works obtainable for buy in “blind bins,” with 108 totally different items hidden inside, laying naked the casino-like nature of the artwork market. In the meantime, the messaging throughout the video and LEDs attracts from philosophy, Buddhism, science fiction, and futurism to query—much like Lin—the character of creativity, authorship, and our more and more digitized consciousness.
