de Sarthe is pleased to present Hong Kong and Shanghai-based artist Chen Pin Tao aka AznGothBoy’s solo exhibition, Violin Makers and Seamstresses I: The Caveman, The Literati, The Iconoclast, concluding de Sarthe’s fifth annual artist residency (deSAR). The exhibition features interwoven series of installations, sculptures, and canvas placed sporadically within a sprawling one-way labyrinth. Enclosed in clinical curtains atop artificial grass, the developed artworks collectively construct a grimy, post-apocalyptic, liminal wasteland, an imagined dimension in which the social-normative perception of reality is obscured. Contemplating Eros, Thanatos, and post-secularism under the nihilistic context of a post-science, post-Internet era, the exhibition forces the confrontation of human nature in the form of an immersive, LARPING-esque (Live Action Role Playing) visual experience. Violin Makers and Seamstresses I: The Caveman, The Literati, The Iconoclast opens on 18 September and runs through 2 October.

There is a growing existential vacuum in the 21st century, exacerbated by capitalist realism and the technology-driven hyperinflation of information and commodities. Objects and images have been processed through endless cycles of mass reproduction until they are born as but empty vessels, ready to be appropriated and reinvented. Contrasting between the pristinely fabricated nature of found objects and images with the primitive hand, the artist aims to create an overtly fake and artificial environment that displaces its viewers while delivering an intentionally juvenile and primal response against the constructs of artificiality, stimulating tensions between accelerated human techne and primitive desires that result in a hyperbolic statement regarding materialism, spirituality, and the body in contemporary life.

Gallery address: 20/F, Global Trade Square, Wong Chuk Hang