Peres Projects Presents – Mak2’s ‘Love Pool’
Peres Projects is pleased to present Love Pool, Mak2’s (b. 1989 in Hong Kong, China) first solo exhibition with Peres Projects at the Berlin gallery. 24th March – 21st April , 2023 Opening Friday, 24th March 6pm – 9pm. Peres Projects Karl-Marx-Allee 82, 10243 Berlin.
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In the triptychs that make up the bulk of the exhibition lovers sit and stand, pixelated at the poolside. Some stare off into space, seemingly disillusioned with the environment. Absurd humour underpins these reflections of modern domesticity and romantic love. The rooms and figures appear interchangeable, forming a complex of representations analogous to the digital terrain of dating apps, places that purport to be points of intimacy but often leave their users want.
The project sees Mak2 infiltrate the world of e-commerce and, via an unorthodox chain of production, carry virtual space into tangible space. Creating and screenshotting scenes in her digitally generated version of Hong Kong on The Sims, she then divides the scenes into thirds and sends each third to a different e-commerce artist to be drawn or painted. Once pieced together in the gallery, the sections never quite match up, their slight misalignment attesting to the work’s fractured manufacturing process. The result is a collection of disorientating triptychs that attempt to imitate contemporary life but instead copy a simulated perversion of reality.
In these rooms, the viewer takes on the role of surveyor, monitoring the Sim’s behaviour and curious to know more. Mak2 pokes fun at the absurdity of concealment in the digital realm where every move we make is unavoidably mapped, gathered and sold. As Mak2 exposes the absurdities of contemporary culture, she seeks truth, not in the meaning behind its images, but instead in the processes that underpin them, their complex production histories, and the contradictions that arise in our search for intimacy in these image-centred spaces.
Mak2’s solo exhibitions include Tao Art Space, Taipei City, de Sarthe Gallery, Beijing and Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Contemporary Art (HOCA) Foundation, Hong Kong. Group exhibitions include HART Haus, Hong Kong, Shanghai Art Mall, Shanghai, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, X Museum, Beijing, K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, in collaboration with MoMA PS1, and Whitechapel Gallery, London. Mak2’s work has entered several permanent collections, including Daisuke Miyatsu Collection, Ichikawa, and the X Museum, Beijing.
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