Peres Projects
Berlin, Germany
Love Pool
2023
A network of neon-lit swimming pools serves as the backdrop to Mak2’s Love Pool. 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. An absurd humor 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 wanting. Through skylights and windows the Hong Kong skyline peers into the space, a constant reminder of the work’s underlying motivation: to find a home for artistic expression in a crowded city.
Tao Art
Taipei, Taiwan
Palace of Love
2023
Expanding on her iconic series Home Sweet Home. Within a virtual environment, the artist created a space with royalty-inspired designs, though the execution is clumsy and exaggerated on purpose. This hybrid of life simulation game and reality dating shows suggests that humans are unwitting consumers in social interactions, paying unconsciously with “emotional labour”. The discrepancy between reality and projected fantasy reflects a sense of inner dissatisfaction that is prevalent. Her black humor carries within it a demonstration of her intuitive understanding of the contemporary human condition.
This exhibition also features a new installation piece entitled Dance of the Geek. A programmer who usually sits behind his computer is invited to dance in front of the camera for the sake of art. His movements seem to be relaxed and funny, but the point which Mak2 is making here, is that “the ex-perience of recruiting a programmer to perform in front of a camera for me is already a relational aesthetic.” In contrast to the trend of blatantly self-promoting on social media, this awkwardness in-stead offers a sense of freshness.
延續其標誌性的「美好家園」系列，以新穎而幽默的觀點探討幻想與現實之間的落差。藝術家在數位環境中打造出兼具浮誇與笨拙趣味的皇家風情，將虛擬人生遊戲嫁接戀愛實境秀，暗喻人在社交關係裡也成了消費者，不自覺地付出「情感勞動」，投射幻想以填補心中的空洞匱乏。她的創作實踐在黑色幽默中隱含藝術家對於人類處境的直觀理解，也對全球當代藝術生產之系統性問題提出反思，並以極具創造力的方式提出個人的解答。
這次展覽中另有一件全新裝置作品《電腦人之舞》，發想於不同框架與位置交錯的社會實驗。平時在電腦後方的程式設計師在鏡頭前跳舞，看似輕鬆搞笑，然而對於麥影彤二而言，「利用藝術之名去邀請電腦人跳舞，製造了很多不安和不確定性，這顛覆了誰應該在鏡頭前，誰應該在鏡頭後的想像。而這種awkwardness（笨拙）有如在充斥着大量自我吹捧貼文中的清泉，給人一種清新的感覺。」
DE SARTHE
Hong Kong, China
House of Fortune
2021
Featuring a new body of installations and videos as well as newly developed works from her iconic series Home Sweet Home (2019-), the exhibition contemplates the correlation between value and belief under the context of Chinese Fengshui and big data in the prevailing digital era.
麥影彤二的第三次個展「闔家富貴」。展覽將展出一系列全新裝置、影像及其標誌性《美好家園》作品系列（2019年起至今）的新畫作，探討在中國風水與盛行的數碼時代大數據的背景下，價值與信仰之間的關聯。
DE SARTHE
Hong Kong, China
Home Sweet Home
2018-2019
In Home Sweet Home, Mak2 examines the ways in which simulation is applied in postmodern escapism. In light of rising costs and growing responsibilities, humanity has adapted to face the escalating hardships of being. In lieu of futile negotiations, we settle for satisfying our needs through fabricated substitutes. Yet, to what extent can simulated replacements compensate the void of actuality? In an unrelenting world, does subsisting on hyperreality diminish our existence as living beings? In a city where these questions are common place, how do we cope?
Featuring a new interdisciplinary body of work that spans installation, painting, and video, the exhibition explores the existential spectrum of postmodern human beings, the inconspicuous integration of simulation into reality, and how layered unrealities have come to comprise her home, Hong Kong.
在《美好家園》中，麥影彤二考察模擬用於逃離現實的各種形式。在物價高漲責任纍纍的世代，人性需要應變存在的艱苦。我們編織替代品來滿足我們的需求，放棄與現實徒勞的談判。可是，模擬品可於什麼程度上彌補現實的空白？在一個不屈的世界中，依靠超現實而生存會減少我們作為生物的存在價值嗎？ 在一個普遍存在這些問題的城市，我們該如何應對？
本次展覽透過一系列全新的跨媒體作品，包括裝置藝術、繪畫以及錄像等，探討後現代人類存在的可能性，以及在模擬與現實的層面上，藝術家在香港的家是如何被分層虛擬建構和理解的。
DE SARTHE
Hong Kong, China
The Anything Machine
2018
The exhibition is the artist's first solo presentation in Beijing, as well as her first solo show with the gallery. Five bodies of work including new installations will be showcased. Mak2's work contemplates the properties of everyday objects and materials.
本次展覽是麥影彤二在德薩畫廊的第一次個展，也是她在北京的第一次個展。麥影彤二的作品往往對人們習以為常的日常事物和材料進行深入思考。
Gallery Exit
Hong Kong, China
WARM WELCOME, 2017 glass beads 120 X 100 cm
SHINE BRIGHT SHINE FOREVER, 2017 pink neon sticks size variable
COMEINSIDE: BABY SHOWER
2017
"BABY SHOWER" is an exhibition of new works by COME INSIDE, an art collective consisting of Mak2 and WONG Ka Ying. COME INSIDE formed in 2016 as a saucy take on female stereotypes in global pop culture.
For this exhibition, COME INSIDE has produced collage-style works that deal with the preference for "cute" and "fragile" women, attributes used for babies. This preference results in a blurred distinction between young women and infants and is powerfully reinforced through global merchandising and e-commerce mechanisms.
Gallery Exit
Hong Kong, China
MAK Ying Tung, Heads I, 2014, balloon heads on canvas, 100 x 150 cm
MAK Ying Tung, My Gas In Vacuum, 2013, balloons, a vacuum bag, resin, dimension variables
MAK Ying Tung, No, I insist, 2014, balloon, resin, dimension variables
MAK Ying Tung, Unimportant Existence, 2014, balloon, foot pump, dimension variables
MAK Ying Tung, Us, 2014, foot pumps, dimension variables
Almost Empty
2014
Mak2 first solo exhibition with the gallery, a deliberate emptiness sits at the heart of Mak2’s Almost Empty - the exhibition revolves around a specific absence both corporeal and conceptual, dualistically exposing the material world within the dichotomy of the real and the unreal.
Intimating the symbolic, metaphorical, material and generative qualities of balloons, pumps and tubes, the works features in Almost Empty are altered in their form and function but meanwhile insisted to perform strange and bizarre tasks. Elaborately rich in sexual undertones, fragility and humor, the conceptually driven, performative sculptures and installations “nearly always reference or confront you with the figurative: its trace, its loss, its needs, its commercialism, its elimination.”
Intimating the symbolic, metaphorical, material and generative qualities of balloons, pumps and tubes, the works features in Almost Empty are altered in their form and function but meanwhile insisted to perform strange and bizarre tasks. Elaborately rich in sexual undertones, fragility and humor, the conceptually driven, performative sculptures and installations “nearly always reference or confront you with the figurative: its trace, its loss, its needs, its commercialism, its elimination.”