Luke Ching: Glitch in the Matrix

Glitch in the Matrix is a solo exhibition by Hong Kong-based artist Luke Ching Chin Wai, which features newly commissioned works and re-enactments and adaptations of Ching’s earlier works.

As one of Hong Kong's most active conceptual artists, Ching changed the roles of artists and observers in and outside the city.  He breeds a discourse system with an evil sense of humor to respond to and interrogate the cultural and political conflicts in Hong Kong.  The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the movie "The Matrix," in which the protagonist Neo feels déjà vu when he sees the same black cat appear twice.  This is the result of a matrix failure, which leads to a change in the virtual world of encoding.  In Ching's case, his daily experience often made him feel trapped between "déjàvu" and "jamais vu", which made him doubt whether there was a malfunction in the system.

The exhibition will display more than a dozen works from the early Ching Dynasty, as well as new commissioned works, revealing political views related to Hong Kong's current social climate.  In "Whispering", the artist recorded the sound of birds in the Hong Kong Story exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History.  These reverberating chi sounds evoke the birds in the cage. In this new exhibition, the artist spreads the recordings in the speakers from the speakers to outside the exhibition window, as a metaphor to release those who suffer from daily difficulties.  In the new work of "Still Life", "Ching" depicts everyday objects in the style of traditional still life paintings.  What is represented in these scenes are some items that the visitors who met the detainees allowed to bring them into the Qingshan Bay Immigration Center.  It took a long time of loneliness to attract these items, which also made his contemplate the ambiguity of time experienced by imprisoned refugees and asylum-seekers.

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