Up Close: Andrew Luk
By HG Masters

Installation view of ANDREW LUK’s Haunted, Salvaged, 2020, extruded polystyrene foam, paint thinner, expanding spray foam, cement, concrete, stainless-steel mesh, stainless steel, steel, steel wire, polyurethane, sea glass, rotating motor, UV resin, aerosol paint, nylon, 370 × 856 × 496 cm, at "Shifting Landscapes," de Sarthe, Hong Kong, 2020. Courtesy the artist and de Sarthe.
The archetypal cover of a classic science-fiction novel features an impossibly craggy architectural structure rising from a barren landscape below a large, low-hanging celestial orb. This retrofuturistic imagery comes rushing to mind when encountering the alien landscapes of Andrew Luk’s Haunted, Salvaged (2020) at de Sarthe gallery, where the Hong Kong artist’s 40-square-meter installation was shown in lieu of its canceled appearance in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong. A pair of suspended, spinning mobiles—echoing the surrealist, avian forms of Alexander Calder’s works—form dual universes of orbiting fuchsia-pink polystyrene wasp nests balanced with clusters of sand-smoothed, clear sea-glass, the original beach contaminant before plastics. The surface of the planet below is made from mesh metal panels that extrude fungus-like chemical orbs of spray foam, while piles of concrete-cast Gameboys, Nokias, and Walkmans are stacked like cairns or models of miniature cities.