‘Phygital’ artworks celebrate Van Gogh’s birth
The new Artech exhibition is now open at One Central Macau until July 31, aiming to integrate physical art and digital art, to create “phygital” art.
“This new kind of art will be the future,” the senior art advisor and founder of the consultancy Art Prince Advisory, the curator of the exhibition, Herman Ng, told the Times.
“Even as a big believer [in] physical art, I’m sure that refusing and banning AI in this sector is a mistake, and that it is better to try understanding it to work with instead of against [it],” he added.
The exhibition reinvents Van Gogh’s story using AI and other technologies.
As part of the celebration of the 170th anniversary of the birth of Dutch artist Van Gogh, Hong Kong artist, architect and collector, William Lim, created in partnership with the creative agency Kaiju Matter the 360° immersive AI art space “Full moon and blossoming flowers.” This gives a new perspective to his creations “Flowers Good Moon Round,” “Ode to the Wandering Son,” “Journey Home” and “Child Inside,” also displayed in the exhibition.
“In the past few years, I have painted several works with different flowers and moon, many of which are influenced by Van Gogh’s works,” featured artist, Lim, said. “I am very happy to share my latest artistic creations with everyone in Macau.”
Eight projectors are set up to display the 360° immersive art piece, while a dozen works of oil on canvas complete the exhibition.
“It was a real challenge to imagine how to transpose the physical artworks into an animated and digitalized one, because Lim and the agency always had to think about what should be behind the elements, taking [into] account that the whole artwork is based on different levels,” Ng said.
In addition, the Hong Kong-based web3 company, Appreciator.io, will present its VG39 digital art series, the world’s first limited edition of “phygital” artworks certified by the Van Gogh Sites Foundation. This will include NFTs representing at least 39 cultural landmarks inspired by the life of the Dutch artist, such as the church of his hometown, Brabant, and the site of his famous painting “The Potato Eaters.”
Cultural exchange
The Artech exhibition displays a desire to become a kind of platform to promote the cultural exchange between Hong Kong and Macau, according to organizers.
“As this is the first time we are going outside Hong Kong since the pandemic, our goal through this Artech exhibition is to highlight the cultural exchange between Macau and Hong Kong, and to bring important pieces of art to Macau,” Herman Ng explained.
Numerous interactive artistic elements are also in place at the exhibition to reinforce this exchange, particularly targeted at the young.
“I think that it is very important to involve more and more the young generation in the field of AI and to raise awareness [among] them, showing that art and technology can work together,” the founder of Art Prince Advisory asserted. “This is this kind of legacy that we want to transfer [to] them.
Staff Reporter
