ANDREW LUK
he archetypal cover of a classic sciencefiction novel features an impossibly craggy architectural structure rising from a barren landscape below a large, lowhanging celestial orb. This retrofuturistic imagery comes (2020) at de Sarthe gallery, where the Hong Kong artist’s 40-square-meter installation was shown in lieu of its canceled appearance in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong. A pair of suspended, spinning mobiles—echoing the surrealist, avian forms of Alexander Calder’s works—form dual universes of orbiting fuchsia-pink polystyrene wasp nests balanced with clusters of sand-smoothed, clear sea-glass, the original beach contaminant before plastics. The surface of the planet below is made from mesh metal panels that extrude fungus-like chemical orbs of spray foam, while piles of concrete-cast Gameboys, Nokias, and Walkmans are stacked like cairns or models of miniature cities.
