Art Central Hong Kong 2023, which takes place 22 – 25 March 2023, marks Artemis Art’s physical return to the fair, a cornerstone event of Hong Kong Arts Month. 

This year, the art fair takes place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) beginning with the VIP Preview on 21 March, which is also where Art Basel Hong Kong (22 – 25 March 2023) is held.

Artemis Art will be participating in booth A36, part of the Gwo Wai curated booth section, featuring a collaborative project by Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas entitled Future Myth.  

Our participation in this year’s edition marks our third appearance in Art Central Hong Kong, the last time being in 2021 (in the HERE/THERE section, specifically set up for galleries unable to physically attend due to pandemic restrictions), and before that back in 2017. Our participation this time around also marks the first time Artemis Art is presenting a focused curated project. Click on the Future Myth tab to find out more about what we will be showing.

For artwork enquiries, contact Artemis Art at in**@ar***************.com, or via WhatsApp at +60 12-373 2188 (the number may also be used to reach us via WeChat, Line, or Viber). Alternatively, you may use the Facebook Messenger chat function displayed on this screen.

Sneak Preview of Future Myth

Future Myth, a collaborative effort by Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas, invites viewers to pause and ponder about how the far future might regard the “past” (in effect, our present time), through the ‘discovery’ of an ancient artifact, at an unspecified time in the future.

The full installation comprises Dedy Sufriadi’s Story of Neo Myth, a painting installation comprising eight of his Book Series works, arranged in a stacked two-layer cube configuration, and a series of eight Cut-Out paintings entitled Sleep Walker. The preview images below were captured separately in the respective artists’ studios, providing an idea of what the project looks like.

We will be updating this page with actual installation shots once the project has been completely installed at the art fair.

Future Myth

It’s a brisk Spring morning in the year 2223, and the archaeological team is thrilled with their new discovery. The night before, they uncovered artifacts not seen by the vast majority of mankind in over a century. Legend has it that these artifacts were a common object used to physically convey information. It was a find that would elucidate questions pertaining to humankind’s past.

~ o ~

Although the archaeologists had only read about these artifacts in historical records about early 21st century culture and society, just about anyone living today in 2023 would immediately recognize the find: fossilized books.

Future Myth is premised on such a hypothetical discovery, occurring at an undisclosed time in the future.

In this collaborative project, Story of Neo Myth, the painting installation by Dedy Sufriadi, is the ‘artifact’, while the Sleep Walker series of cut-out paintings by Taufik Ermas represents broader philosophical and psychological implications of the artifact being found.

The project doesn’t seek to predict what discussions or questions might arise, nor venture any answers. Instead, it invites us to ponder what intellectual and thought environments might exist in this hypothetical future, based on our experiences and knowledge of how we ourselves view contemporary events and our own history in present times.

Text, and pretty much everything related to it, has been a key part of Dedy Sufriadi’s artistic career and practice, spanning some two decades. He has observed that there is a general decline of analytical comprehension in contemporary society, particularly in the reading of events – both contemporary and historical – which quite often are viewed through parochial and partisan lenses. For historical events, there is the added tendency for presentism being generously applied. As a result, the actual essence and outcomes of these events become severely distorted, misunderstood, and misrepresented.

Compounded by the accelerated dissemination of information via advanced communication technologies, these distorted viewpoints spread like wildfire, causing them to eventually be accepted as ‘truths’ within segments of contemporary society with a tendency to accept information without much critical filtering. Such a tendency has emerged, in part, due to shifts in how information is consumed; a shift in literacy from active reading of physical printed materials to quick, bite-sized consumption of information transmitted through electronic media. These narrow and superficial readings often lead to misconstrued comprehension of events, creating new ‘truths’ whose accuracy is suspect.

The Sleep Walker series of works by Taufik Ermas, presented as a series of eight cut-out paintings, encapsulates the articulation of society’s “superficial reading” by offering perspectives premised upon functional human cognitive traits and psychology.

Taufik’s works, visual translations and depictions of communal/collective memory, asks the viewer to ponder the broader effects of how these misinterpreted takes on events and history might influence a community’s worldview, in the process of searching for communal existential meaning.

The indistinct urban landscape that acts as a backdrop to Taufik’s cut-out human silhouettes depicts the artist’s visualization of mental refraction, how mental images of our experiences are not always accurate representations of reality, but are instead how reality is perceived and processed.

Our life in today’s modern and increasingly urbanised world is driven by ‘wants’, not merely requirements for personal sustenance but also by the constant influence of our surroundings and the non-stop stimuli our senses are bombarded with on a daily basis. Increasingly, these stimuli are influenced by commercialism and materialism, exacerbated by the proliferation of online media in our daily lives.

What we perceive, therefore, as freedom to pursue these ‘wants’ are in fact illusions; they are pseudo-freedoms, allowing free will to operate, but within the bounds of a system that dictates what these ‘wants’ should be.

Taking into context the correlation of ideations embodied within the two artists’ works, Future Myth explores and raises interesting questions about how the hypothetical future might view us today.

We cannot, of course, predict what the world will be like centuries from now. Perhaps educated guesses based on observed trajectories existent today, but we’ll never know for sure.

Through Future Myth, both Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas invite us to pause and ponder.

How will our present-day world be perceived by those living in the future, 50, 100 years, or even centuries from now? Will the trends of ‘superficial reading’ of events, particularly from the past, coupled with humankind continuing to exercise their pseudo-freedoms, remain characteristics of future societies, or even exacerbated in comparison to today?

What ‘future myths’ about the ‘past’ will emerge, derived from these uncovered artifacts from our ‘present’?

下載 “未來神話” PDF 格式的文章

Translation by Yi Pei Lee

未來神話

這是2223年春天的一個輕快早晨，考古隊對他們的新發現感到興奮。前一天晚上，他們發現到一個多世紀以來絕大多數人類沒有見過的文物。傳說中，這些文物是一種常見、用於物理傳遞訊息的物件。這是一個能闡明與人類歷史有關的問題發現。

~ o ~

儘管考古學家只在關於21世紀初文化和社會的歷史記錄中讀過這些文物，但幾乎任何生活在2023年的人都會立即認出這一發現：書籍化石。

未來神話創造一個假設性的發現為前提，發生在未來的一個未被揭露的時間。在這個合作計畫中，Dedy Sufriadi的繪畫裝置《新神話的故事》是 「文物」，而Taufik Ermas的《夢遊者》系列剪紙畫則代表了被發現、並具有更廣泛的哲學和心理意義的文物。

該計畫並不尋求預測可能出現的討論或問題，也不會冒險的給出任何答案。相反地，它邀請我們思考在這個假設性未來可能存在什麼樣的知識和思想，基於我們的經驗與知識，我們自己如何看待當代事件，以及我們自己在當下的時代歷史。

文本，以及幾乎所有與之相關的東西，一直是Dedy Sufriadi橫跨了20年的藝術生涯之關鍵實踐。他觀察到，當代社會的分析理解能力普遍下降，特別是在解讀事件方面 — 無論是當代還是歷史事件 — 往往是通過狹隘和黨派的視角看待。對於歷史事件，存在一種被現代主義廣泛地應用的趨勢。因此，這些事件的真實本質和結果被嚴重扭曲、誤解和誤傳。

再加上，這些被扭曲的觀點通過先進的通訊技術傳播如野火一樣蔓延，導致它們最終被當代社會的某些部分接受為某種未經過嚴格過濾的「真相 (truths)」。會出現這樣鬆散的趨勢，部分是由於訊息消費方式的轉變；從主動閱讀實體印刷品到快速地少量吞食數位訊息。這些狹隘和膚淺的理解往往導致對事件的誤解，創造出令人懷疑的新 「真理 (truths)」。

Taufik Ermas的《夢遊者》系列作品以八幅剪紙畫形式呈現，提供觀眾以功能性的人類認知特徵和心理學為前提，概括了對社會 「膚淺解讀 」的闡述。

Taufik的作品、視覺轉譯和對社區/集體記憶的描述，要求觀眾在尋找公共存在意義的過程中，思考這些對事件和歷史的誤讀如何影響集體世界觀的廣泛影響。

模糊的城市景觀作為Taufik裁剪出的人體剪影背景，代表著藝術家將心理折射的可視化視覺語言；我們所經驗的心理圖像並不總是對現實的精準再現，而是現實如何被感知和處理的。

在當今日益城市化的世界中，我們的生活是受到「需求」驅動的，不僅僅是對個人生計的需求，還受到周圍環境的持續影響，以及我們的感官每天不停地被轟炸刺激。這些刺激越來越受到商業主義和物質主義的影響，而網路社交媒體的氾濫更加劇了這種影響。

因此，我們認為追求這些「需求」的自由實際上是一種幻覺；它們是允許自由意志運作、但在某個系統範圍內存在的偽自由。

考量著兩位藝術家作品中所體現的思想相關性，《未來神話》探索並提出了關於假想的未來如何看待我們今天的有趣問題。

當然，我們無法預測幾個世紀後的世界會是什麼樣子。也許根據今天觀察到的軌跡進行有根據的猜測，但我們永遠無法確定。

透過《未來神話》，Dedy Sufriadi和Taufik Ermas邀請我們停下來思考。

生活在未來的人將如何看待我們今天的世界，50年、100年，甚至幾個世紀之後？對事件的「膚淺解讀」的趨勢，特別是對過去的事件，再加上人類繼續行使他們的偽自由，是否仍然是未來社會的特徵，甚至與今天相比更加嚴重？

哪些關於「過去」的「未來神話」將從我們「現在」這些未被發現的文物衍生出來？

Dedy Sufriadi

(b. 1976 in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia)

full artist profile

Individual Work Details

Story of Neo Myth, Dedy Sufriadi’s installation that forms part of the Future Myth project, comprises eight paintings from the artist’s Book Series. Physical books and/or notebooks are collaged onto the canvas surface, creating a new non-uniform surface upon which the artist creates his compositions. A more detailed view of each work is provided below; to view the artwork details and a larger image, click on the thumbnails below.

Taufik Ermas

(b. 1984 in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, Indonesia)

full artist profile

Individual Work Details

Sleep Walker, a series of eight cut-out paintings by Taufik Ermas forms part of the Future Myth project. The void spaces created within each painting are outlines of human figures, against deserted urban scenes, each pose inferring the search for something. A more detailed view of each work is provided below; to view the artwork details and a larger image, click on the thumbnails below.

Future Myth catalog

Browse the catalog here or download via this link
(if catalog does not load, click Full Screen View or Page Thumbnail button)

Future Myth: Installation Images

Future Myth is Artemis Art’s core presentation at Art Central Hong Kong 2023, consisting of Dedy Sufriadi’s “Story of Neo Myth” and Taufik Ermas’ “Sleep Walker” series. Click on any slide to view a larger image (with captions). Check out our Instagram account for more images from the art fair.