GORDON CHEUNG
Archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
37·5 × 29·7 cm
Edition #10 of 25
 
Gordon Cheung’s work captures the mood of the global collapse of civilization where moral, economic, and environmental crises have spun out of control. Spiritual undertones are balanced alongside familiar contemporary images including sources from popular media, cyberspace, nature, graffiti, kitsch, and historical painting. Born from Chinese parents and raised in 21st century London, Cheung’s multi-media art captures the hallucinations between the virtual and actual realities of a globalised world oscillating between utopia and dystopia. Spray paint, acrylic, pastels, stock listings and ink collide in his works to form epic techno-sublime vistas. 
The first recorded economic bubble is thought to trace back to the Dutch Golden Age over 370 years ago: the speculative trading of tulip bulbs that is steeped in myth and morality. For this image he has ‘pixelsorted’ a Rachel Ruysch image. Raised in an academic family Ruysch became an iconic female painter of botanical images (despite having ten children!). 
By ‘glitching’ the photographs of still life paintings and reordering the pixels according to an algorithm, the artist questions the effect and the repetition of history resulting in what he calls the ‘digital sands-of-time’ effect.