Carla Chan will present her augmented reality artworks in New York, and Hong Kong in May 2022. Carla Chan considers digital art as a medium of boundless artistic expression. Her collaboration with La Prairie resulted in immersive augmented reality-based works and her first NFT.
Unfalling Black is an augmented reality experience that reveals digitally manipulated weather formation in an enclosed environment. Using a mobile device as a digital window, the work uncovers the displacing choreography of rain, storms, and snow, occurring all around the audience and yet witnessed only through the computerized lens. The digital representations of weather are rendered to their extreme in both form and time, in which the otherwise unnoticed change of weather conditions is unfolded in fast-forward and even in reverse. Between the familiar weather texture and the unrealistic weather patterns, the work signifies the distressing speed of change towards extreme weather, envisioning a dystopian future in an immersive cinematic experience.
The inspiration for this artwork is the loss of glaciers observed during the artist’s residency in Switzerland. Such a disappearing landscape in the natural environment is the center of the conceptual framework of this artwork and the exhibition as a whole. Through the power of augmented reality, the extreme power of weather can be visualized through physics-defying manipulation. In seeing the result of climate change through digital gaze, the exhibition becomes a space for contemplation as well as realization that the result is irreversible. The reverse effect seen in this artwork can only happen in the digital and imaginary realm.
This work recreates weather indoor using an augmented reality application created in partnership with ZHEN, Chan's tech partner for the exhibition. As the audience walks into the exhibition space with their iPhones, they are immersed into a space with the weather events happening around and above them. The weather experience is built with immersion in mind, utilizing sophisticated depth perception and space mapping to immerse the viewer in the environment, blurring the lines between virtual and reality.
- Official launch at Frieze New York – May 18 - 22, 2022 - Drop start at 11am (USA-NY) - Carla Chan's solo project with La Prairie at Frieze New York in addition to presenting AR works, Chan will launch her first NFT, Space Beyond, making her one of the few artists working in this format. To date, less than five percent of NFTs have been created by women. Smart Token Labs is the technical partner. "My inspiration for the NFT," Chan says, "came during my first La Prairie residency at the Monte Rosa Hut, in close proximity to Switzerland's most impressive - and endangered - landscape: glaciers. The artwork says something about the disappearance of nature by capturing landscapes that will soon cease to exist. I like the idea that the artwork will continue to evolve beyond my own lifetime." A portion of the proceeds from the NFT sale will go to the Department of Glaciology at ETH Zurich, a long-term partner of La Prairie. LaPrairie is committed to protecting the Swiss Alps and supports research at ETH Zurich.
- Exhibition continuous at Art Basel Hong Kong - Tai Kwun Museum May 23 – June 1, 2022 - Carla Chan presents her solo exhibition Fading Space of Dawn, an immersive video installation and augmented reality project at Museum Tai Kwun, concurrent with Art Basel Hong Kong Technical AR Support: ZHEN.
- Edition reveal date - will be updated on the website
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About Carla Chan
Carla Chan is a media artist from Hong Kong and currently based in Berlin. She works with a variety of media including video installation, interactive media, virtual and augmented reality, of which the time-based medium through computational processes is vital to her practice. Much like the never-ending development of new technologies, her approach to media art challenges the conventional perception of new media interface with ever-evolving possibilities for artistic expressions.
Chan’s recent works focus on the digital representation of nature. Fusing the poetics in both nature and digital technologies, her work creates a virtual space for contemplation. Minimal in style, her works blend physical and digital elements into a hybrid form of materiality, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion, figure and abstraction.
Chan has been exhibited regionally and internationally including Hong Kong Museum of Art (HK), ZKM (DE), Asia Society Hong Kong (HK), Art Basel (HK), Frieze NY (US), Today Art Museum (CN), and more. She has been awarded Toy Berlin Masters Award (DE) and Young Artist Award (Media Arts) at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards. Her works have been collected in M+ Museum (HK) and the Burger Collection (CH/HK).
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