Upon entering the exhibition, you will encounter familiar artworks that you might recall from our earlier exhibitions. This collection features a range of unsold artworks. Additionally, an AI podcast discussing the context of the show, generated based on this press release, will be playing throughout the gallery.

In today’s speculative art market, characterized by exaggeration and market manipulation, DE SARTHE is marking its first show of the year with a month-long deliberate showcase of unsold works from past exhibitions. A curatorial concept that goes against the grain of common market-driven practices, the exhibition intends to spark critical discussions about market dynamics, reset the manipulated perceptions of what is considered value in art, and reemphasize the importance of fostering a healthy and sustainable art world ecosystem.

In the recent past, the contemporary art market has been swept over and inflated by trends driven by speculators seeking to make quick financial gains. Art became increasingly popular as a financial investment or asset, and the definition of value became predominated by sales figures, which places artists and galleries under the pressure to continuously produce sellable art, creating a spiral wherein the intention of art is lost or obscured.

But just as history has previously demonstrated, the speculative bubble is now bursting – and a market reset is taking place. In this vital moment, DE SARTHE invites a reevaluation of what constitutes artistic success, a renewal of the notion that art’s greatest significance lies not on its commercial value, but its importance, even necessity, as agents of culture. By highlighting unsold works from our previous exhibitions, we aim to challenge the preconceived notions about the quality or appeal of these works, providing an opportunity to initiate a dialogue about the intrinsic worth of art.

Consider the fundamental role of art in civilization and society, the factors that perpetuate art as a medium of culture and communication. Artists often use their work as means of discourse or conceptual expression, creating works that evoke not immediate infatuation but contemplations vis-à-vis the world around us. In that capacity, it is also our deep belief that the role and responsibility of a gallery should be more than just a point of sale, but a collaborative partner that helps develop an artist’s practice, ensure the sustainability of an artist’s career, as well as provide a platform for meaningful conversations and critical discussions.

It has always been DE SARTHE’s resolution to present authenticity and creative expression over considerations of commercial success, focusing on artworks of current historical relevance rather than the illusion of speculative financial gain. Our objective is to cultivate stronger and genuine relationships between artists, collectors, and the broader community, which forms the foundation to a healthy art ecosystem.

This exhibition is emblematic of DE SARTHE’s contemporary program, which works alongside like-minded artists that investigate the changes and narratives in our current socio-technological landscape.

About the Artworks

Looking at the manufactured glow of Chan Ka Kiu’s window After (2024), one will find themself face to face with the perfect view: a full bright moon, sprawling mountains, and the reflection of a vanilla sky from a lake below. This digital collage of found and AI-generated online images that the artist haphazardly put together project a dreamlike fantasy that is so incredibly exaggerated that the landscape depicted is bluntly fictitious. Like a theatrical scenery in a stage play, the lightbox views embrace the mirage and allow the audience to glimpse into make-believe. In a way, Chan’s screen mirrors the screens in our lives—portals to universes beyond our imagination, or escapes from reality as we know it, that we wholeheartedly get lost in and lean into.

Lin Jingjing’s triptych on canvas Fall in Love a Million Times (2019) marks a pivotal point in the artist’s career. The piece is one of the first works from her Lov-Lov series, which in 2019, posited a prophetic future in which artificial intelligence would become an integral part of society and human relationships. It was also this body of works that developed into her now alter-ego, which reflects upon the fluidity between technology and creation with relevance to contemporary art. In this instance, the conceptual value of the exhibited work started as an observation of the moment, but in five years’ time, became a historically significant documentation of the intangible tension and subtle changes in social landscape that arose just before the rapid development of AI.

Lu Xinjian’s Reflection series depicts various waterfront landmarks that indicative of a city’s identity. In the exhibited work, Lu portrays Hong Kong’s own HSBC building as well as its reflection in the water using a vibrant composition of simple lines, shapes, and colors. His manipulation of the imagery not only mediates between the two extreme points produced by the iconic building but creates an illusionary landscape that points to the complexities of the city

Eugene Lun’s The Invincible (2023) is that last of a 4-part chronicle, in which the artist’s sausage alter ego [Cheong1][Cheong4] overcomes its fear of snakes, humorously turning these slippery home intruders into delicious gelatin desserts. The series draws inspiration from the idiom, "turn to jelly” - referring to the feeling of vulnerability and powerlessness caused by fear or distress, and the artist asks: what if we were to reinterpret the saying and, instead of the above, transform our fears into wobbly, edible jelly that we can dismantle and consume with pleasure? Turning fright into wondrous, enjoyable fun, Lun created an AR animation that is activated upon scanning the canvas. The comical confrontation of snakes both through the narrative of [Cheong1][Cheong4] and audience participation signifies a liberation that can come with switching perspectives.

Ma Sibo’s Enclosure (2018) is a work from his near sold-out exhibition at the gallery in 2018. Light plays the lead in Ma Sibo’s paintings. While using light and shadow to create space is one of the everlasting magic powers of painting, the artist has an inverted interpretation, wherein his approach can even be seen as building light and shadow by space and objects. It is not classical beauty that the artist pursues, but silence, and this invisible and unspeakable silence becomes Ma’s destination. Within his imagery, the artist fosters an environment in which the noise of the world is removed. The exhibited artwork leans on the emptied structure for composition, liberating the spread of light, and the colors present a rare tranquility that echoes beyond the canvas.

Mak2 visualizes her ideal version of the world in her iconic series Home Sweet Home (2019-). Each triptych is composed using the popular life simulation videogame, The Sims, wherein the artist constructs dream-like and surreal environments that she covets in real life. The imagery she crafts is then cut into thirds and sent to be produced by three different craftsmen hired from the e-commerce platform Taobao. Inevitably resulting in a triptych with discrepancies in color, texture, and alignment, Mak2’s artworks not only elucidate the unavoidable difference between reality and fantasy but initiates a series of thought-provoking questions regarding the boundaries of digital escapism, creation, and authorship. As a conceptual artist, Mak2 had also conceived Home Sweet Home partially as a means of creating sellable, physical artworks – exemplifying the artist’s unique blend of humor, critique, and curiosity.

Meeting eyes with the figure portrayed by Richard Streitmatter-Tran, one would feel not hostility, but an intensity in confrontation. Titled Bless the Beasts and the Children (2019-20) after the 1971 film, in which a group of youth struggle in a pyrrhic battle against preordained defeat, the series speaks to the universal tenacity of human will in the face of conflict. Streitmatter-Tran often uses portraits of unnamed figures as symbols of his observations of society and the human condition, evoking the mentality of being a collective through engaging the audience in a face-to-face encounter.

Caison Wang’s practice often combines painting and 3D modelling, metaphorically mediating between the labor of the human hand and human being’s newfound omnipotence enabled by contemporary technology. The artist often positions herself as a God-like figure within her artworks, wherein religion, myths, and beings are created as products of her world. Her Happy Birthday series (2023-) sees the ritualistic celebration as the perfect day and occasion in which humans can similarly place themselves in the center of their perceived world. In the name of celebration, a temporal fairground is generated, in which one is left with nothing to do except play, and the birthday man finally becomes the master of the self.

Wang Guofeng’s (b. 1967, lives and works in Beijing) photographic diptych Memory No.3 investigates the concept and constitution of “an image.” The left panel of the artwork depicts an abstract array of blurred stripes. The subtle gradients of each ribbon blend into one another, creating an optically illusional picture. On the right, a densely packed matrix of thumbnails mimics the composition of its counterpart. In his creative practice, Wang Guofeng collects existing visual materials politically, socially, or culturally significant to the 21st century. Often working with pixelation and image manipulation, he deconstructs the imagery and re-encodes them into a new visual language.

Behind Xinyang Zhang’s colorfully playful imagery are profound contemplations regarding human nature, and how it is portrayed through mainstream media outlets. Her painting Out of the Time No. 5 (2022) was first exhibited in her 2022 exhibition at the gallery, in which she gathered true stories from the news of chilling crimes, reiterating them in her loose and expressive visual language. Under her brush, what were normalizations of violence and trauma are transformed into surreal scenes of eerie romanticism and emblems of human vulnerability that exist outside of a specific time and space.

Zhong Wei attempts to capture the complex narratives of advancing technology from the view of a user. His visceral visual language mimics the rampantly chaotic landscape of the Internet, and his brightly saturated palette recall the experience of a digital screen. Within his artworks, he composes organic and sentient entities using a combination of codes, digital imagery, and man-made markings. The exhibited artwork Derived Structure Diagram (2023) is part of an ongoing series of works on canvas wherein Zhong dissects and reconstructs the various interactions between humans and AI as well as humans with one another, reflecting upon the fragmentation of information and communication in the digital era.

Zhou Wendou’s Reverse No. 2 (2014) crafts a commentary on 21st century social being through references to traffic and pollution in a major metropolis such as Beijing. Reverse is a sculptural amalgamation of backlights found on motorized vehicles. Its abstract form visually references a sight familiar to drivers in Beijing - the flickering of blurred red lights through foggy air caused by car’s gas emissions. To the artist, the bidirectional relationship and the repetition of cause and effect is the most paradoxical representation of people as social beings. It is a status of compulsion and a dissimilated world.