Cows With Built-in Wi-Fi Mak2

Peres Projects is pleased to present Cows With Built-in Wi-Fi, Mak2’s (b. 1989 in Hong Kong, CN) second solo exhibition with Peres Projects, and her first in the Seoul gallery. This exhibition of works on canvas, will also feature 3D printed sculptural objects as well as a video installation.

Blending virtual environments with real-world anxieties, Mak2 translates the digital vernacular of contemporary life into paintings, sculptures and installations. Her aesthetic reflects a fascination with simulation and constructed realities, wherein the line between the imagined and the real seems to bend easily. Pixelated textures are fused with vibrant scolour palettes and hyper-realistic details, while digital and physical worlds converge in an uncanny landscape, familiar yet disorienting, and mirroring the ways in which technology permeates and alters our lived experiences.

In this new body of work, Mak2 further interrogates the boundaries between fantasy, reality, and the human experience. Using the digital world of The Sims video game as a backdrop, she reimagines fantastical and humorous fake news narratives, embedded within the serene and idyllic settings of her extensive project Home Sweet Home. Headlines such as “Cows with Built-In Wi-Fi” or “Man Marries Pizza” are transformed into vibrant, surreal paintings that challenge and disrupt the utopian ideals of a perfect world and an ideal home. By embedding these absurd, fabricated stories into idyllic living spaces, Mak2 underlines just how fragile our perception of reality is.

The intrusion of fake news into these meticulously constructed environments serves as a metaphor for the unsettling ways misinformation distorts truth and impacts our daily lives. Such disruption prompts viewers to interrogate the stability of their own perceptions and highlights how easily reality can be manipulated. With the piece Cows with Built-In Wi-Fi which gives the exhibition its title, Mak2 recounts and renders a story of scientists supposedly modifying cows to function as mobile hotspots, inviting the audience to contemplate the broader implications of misinformation and the fluidity of truth in the digital age.

Artificial Intelligence subtly yet significantly contributes to this blending of the absurd with the mundane in Mak2’s work, altering the Home Sweet Home settings to seamlessly weave in whimsical and satirical narratives. This use of AI enhances the surreal quality of the works while reflecting the growing influence of technology in shaping contemporary perceptions and experiences. By re-contextualizing fictional and nonsensical narratives within seemingly perfect settings, Mak2’s pictorial universe engages with ongoing discussions around post-truth and the collapse of traditional media hierarchies, urging viewers to critically reflect on the content they consume in an increasingly artificial world.

This is Mak2’s second exhibition with Peres Projects, and her first in the Seoul gallery. Her recent solo exhibitions include de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong (2024, 2021) and Beijing (2018); Peres Projects, Berlin (2023); Tao Art Space, Taipei City (2023); and Hong Kong Contemporary Art (HOCA) Foundation, Hong Kong (2016). Her work has been part of numerous group exhibitions, including Gender Revealed, 480.0 Gender & Art Space, Hong Kong (2024); Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); EXERCISING FREEDOM, HART Haus, Hong Kong (2023); Mirage or Reality, chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2021); The Principle of Hope, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing (2021); X Museum Triennial: How Do We Begin?, X Museum, Beijing (2020); and .com/.cn –, K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, in collaboration with MoMA PS1 (2018).