Lu Yang’s 3D animations and installations explore fundamental questions about the relationships between the body and consciousness, spirituality and science, technology and the limits of being human. Yang introduces his own body into many of his works, subjecting this proxy to myriad experiments that seem to perpetually stage his own multiplication, disintegration, or dissection. The artist’s recent works revolve around the character DOKU, who Yang conceives as a digital shell or virtual human. DOKU is named after the phrase “Dokusho Dokushi,” meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone.” Yang has been working on the digital assets for this non-binary avatar for over two years and considers the character a reincarnation of himself into a digital parallel universe. Yang’s experiments with DOKU take on many forms, including a series of iconic light boxes recently displayed in the solo exhibition Digital Descending at ARoS in Aarhus, Denmark.

Lu Yang (b.1984, Shanghai) lives and works in Shanghai and Tokyo. He was selected Artist of the Year 2022 by Deutsche Bank. His work is currently exhibited in a solo shows at venues including Kunsthalle Basel, Basel and at Oi! Street Art Space in Hong Kong. His work is also part of WORLDBUILDING curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf.

Lu Yang has been the subject of solo exhibitions at international institutions such as Palais Populaire, Berlin; ARoS Museum, Aarhus; M Woods, Beijing; MOCA Cleveland; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Kunstpalais Erlangen. He has participated in group exhibitions at The Milk of Dreams at La Biennale di Venezia; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; CCA Tel Aviv; ICA, London; Muzeum Sztuki, Poland; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Fridericianum, Kassel among others.

Certainly, this exhibit focuses on an activity worth reckoning with. In 2022, 3.03 billion people—more than a third of the world’s population—played video games. As Hans Ulrich Obrist asserts, this hobby has become “the biggest mass phenomenon of our time. Many people spend hours every day in a parallel world and live a multitude of different lives. Video games are to the twenty-first century what movies were to the twentieth century and novels to the nineteenth century”. Around a hundred years ago, in his book Homo Ludens, the historian Johan Huizinga theorized that play is a basic drive of humankind. Bringing people together in new ways, he contends, play is the source of culture.

More recently, in his book Games: Agency as Art, C. Thi Nguyen argues that games, particularly video games, are a distinct type of art which “let us experience forms of agency we might not have discovered on our own”. As such, gaming has the potential to unleash powerful psychic forces. Video games have proven to be an effective tool for the development of training and strategy. Indeed, scientists have made good use of video games simulating biological systems to speculate on the possible origins and destination of life. Accordingly, video games as a digital art form offer a means for an existential quest beyond the embodied physical world and into the multiverse. By their very nature, they open the potential to imagine and build new worlds.

Several of the featured artists in the exhibit began making work that refers to video games as early as the 1980’s while most of the others were just born around that time. For the works in this show, artists have addressed video games in various ways. Some have adapted their themes and visual style to make videos. Others have modified, hacked, and subverted existing video games. Finally, some have created their own video games. As Hans-Ulrich Obrist writes, “traditionally, video games were created by a small and insular group of people…producing games with a very limited perspective. This is now changing rapidly… Artists are increasingly developing the technical ability to create [their own] virtual worlds of diversity and inclusion”. Through these means, the artists are taking this format beyond pure entertainment value to probe social, political, and aesthetic questions. While video games have been the topic of numerous exhibitions in recent years, most of these highlighted their legitimacy as an artistic medium or focused on aspects of “game art”.

LuYang takes the human as the center point of an investigation that deploys the cultures of anime, Buddhism, digital technology, gaming, Indonesian dance rituals, neuroscience, and sci-fi to mine the mess (and magic) of the human condition. The resulting artworks are engrossing, fantastical, and sometimes grotesque techno-psychedelic videos, installations, and computer games that tackle topics of such magnitude as life, death, reincarnation, or even global destruction. For LuYang Vibratory Field at Kunsthalle Basel, the Shanghai-born artist’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland and one of the most comprehensive presentations of the artist’s production from the last decade, nearly every room will evoke a different cosmos spawned from the videos featured within them.

Enter the disorientating and darkly humorous worlds created by multimedia artist LuYang for their first UK solo exhibition. Immersed in the cultures of anime, video games and sci-fi, LuYang combines Buddhism, neuroscience and digital technology to investigate the mysteries and mechanics of the human body and mind. The title LuYang NetiNeti incorporates the Sanskrit expression ‘neti neti’, meaning ‘neither this, nor that’. The Main Hall focuses on the artist’s own avatar, DOKU, created using CGI animation and by motion-tracking the movements of dancers. The six versions of DOKU that exist to date correspond to the six paths of Buddhist reincarnation: Hell, Heaven, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Asura and Human. DOKU – Binary conflicts invert illusions is a new video commissioned by Zabludowicz Collection. It features the characters Heaven and Hell engaged in a dance on a yin yang symbol, leading to the formation of a new hybrid DOKU character, the binary god. Presented on a large screen on the altar, DOKU the Self follows a version of LuYang on a passenger aeroplane moving through numerous states of perception. The narrator contemplates the concepts of reincarnation, consciousness, and our understanding of ‘the self’. Our Back Gallery has been transformed into an interactive games arcade, with the ambitious Material World Knight project at its centre. Characters from LuYang’s earlier works appear, accompanying you on a philosophical quest through techno-psychedelic realms. The Middle Gallery screening room presents a selection of LuYang’s key video works, made in collaboration with J-pop idols, music producers and scientists. Entertaining, thought-provoking and sometimes grotesque, LuYang’s fantastic spaces don’t shy away from exploring human mortality and the nature of reality itself.

In collaboration with experts from the fields of dance, music, philosophy and science, LuYang creates a posthuman metaverse in which identities are fluid. It opens up completely new art experiences that radically question concepts such as cultural identity, body, and gender, but also the perception of reality. This includes the transgression of previous human possibilities—be they intellectual, emotional, or physical—through the use of high tech and the extension of the body as a cyborg or avatar.

The unusual thing about this position is that the posthuman is in the context of Buddhist and Hindu cosmologies. The artist’s projects begin where current scientific and technological thinking intersects with traditional spiritual and philosophical principles. LuYang experiments with the notion that virtual existence can not only extend physical existence, but also replace it in the future with its unlimited possibilities—without binary categories such as natural/artificial or male/female. LuYang contrasts the idea of an identity anchored in the body and in chronological time with multiple identities and realities that know no fixed self but only permanent change.

Lu Yang’s avatars personify this change. They resemble anime characters and superheroes and are have names such as Human, Heaven, Fighter, Animal, Hungry Ghost, and Hell. Each avatar embodies one of the six realms of rebirth of Samsara, the karmic wheel of life that symbolizes the eternal cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation.

DOKU the Self is the first narrative film dedicated to the avatar. It is like a radical visual meditation: in breathtaking images, we can see how DOKU lives and dies in each of these Buddhist worlds,radically freeing itself from the concept of the self and the body.

The exhibition is like a high-tech laboratory that offers also a lookbehind the scenes of technology and the possibility to participate in a video. In addition to DOKU the Self, LuYang’s music video DOKU the Matrix, conceived expressly for the show, and the new series Bardo #1, which shows DOKU with its respective attributes in round mandala compositions, are presented. Engaging, philosophical, and sometimes disturbing, DOKU Experience Centerintroduces us to a way of thinking shaped by new technologies that is at once ancient and spiritual—a mind-expanding experience in the truest sense.

Lu Yang’s 3D animations and installations adopt strategies taken from science, religion, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, games, pop culture, and music to highlight the biological and material determinants of what it means to be human in the 21st century. In doing so, he opens up fundamental questions about the relationships between the body and consciousness, spirituality and science, technology and the limits of being human. Yang introduces his own body into many of his works, subjecting this proxy to myriad experiments that seem to perpetually stage the multiplication, disintegration, or dissection of the body.

On the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams, Lu Yang presents the most recent chapter in his ongoing work DOKU. The character DOKU is a digital shell, a virtual human named after the phrase “Dokusho Dokushi,” meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone.” Yang has been working on the digital assets for this non-binary avatar for over two years and considers the character a reincarnation of himself into a digital parallel universe. Building upon his ongoing interest in the digitization of the human body and mind, not only does Yang’s body provide the template for this virtual human, but his own memories form the core of DOKU’s first narrative film, which is inspired by a sensation of the “overview effect”—a cognitive shift in awareness sparked by observing the world from afar—that the artist experienced while flying during a lightning storm.

LuYang's art is a unique crossover of neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy, medical technology and body enhancement, as well as manga aesthetics and fantastical sci-fi. Inspired by social issues derived from these fields, LuYang creates artworks and digital avatars that can be read as commentaries on current identity debates as well as the supposed limits of cultural identity. The artist's claim, however, extends far beyond the realm of fiction - LuYang breaks with established categories of thought such as "real" and "artificial" or "male" and "female" right into his own biography. The question of a "true" biological gender is deliberately put aside in order to create mental freedom and to let creativity come to the fore. This concept is personified by LuYang's digital reincarnation Doku, a gender-neutral avatar who will also play the main role in a new video work created especially for Kunstpalais.

The exhibition False Awakening draws from global gaming culture not only in aethetic terms. Visitors are invited to slip into selected roles from LuYang's repertoire and explore his digital world.

The exhibition Digital Descending at ARoS takes the form of a flashing immersive world made up of sounds, screens, film and a video game, creating a sensuous and hectic digital universe. Visitors move through Lu Yang’s virtual parallel world inhabited by gods and demons, heroes, warriors and cyborgs inspired by universes hailing from the realms of gaming, manga and Eastern religions.

For many people, especially younger people, gaming offers a virtual parallel universe that can seem more interesting, immersive and stimulating than the real world. Lu Yang is very preoccupied with the realms of opportunity unleashed in these parallel worlds. Here you or your digital character can gain superpowers, adopt a range of different roles and zap across time and space, says curator at ARoS Jeanett Stampe.

In the various works featured in the exhibition, the artist’s own genderless avatar appears in multiple versions, including the brand-new hyper-realistic avatar DOKU, which constitutes the main character in the work DOKU - 6 Realms of Reincarnation. Lu Yang calls the avatar a digital reincarnation: DOKU is based on a high-tech face scan of the artist’s own face, capable of reproducing expressions with almost 100 per cent accuracy.

Lu Yangs’s work delves into the relationship between technology and religion, though these fields overlap without any pretense of binary opposition—religion is not always blindly superstitious and technology is not necessarily the pinnacle of scientific thought. The work Electromagnetic Brainology gets its pulse from the Buddhist and Hindu conception of the four great elements—Earth, Water, Fire and Air—corresponding to the four great pains in the brain’s neurological system. The artist thus creates four deities armed with modern medical techniques and equipment intending to dissolve the overarching sources of human suffering. These elements constitute our human bodies and the great pains of earth, water, fire and air become the slings and arrows, reflecting the difficulties that all people experience in their lives. The four decompositions discussed in Buddhism are a series of processes that ultimately lead to the death of our human flesh.

The artist incorporates her own image and form into the artwork without fear or hesitation, having a representation of her body inserted slowly into a coffin before being loaded headlong into an intricate, yet kitsch version of a traditional Chinese, ornament-laden funeral car. Since death is such a profoundly sensitive and fear-inducing taboo, particularly in societies with roots in Chinese culture, the artist has no choice but to incarnate herself in the leading role of the piece. Though images of Lu Yang’s own form are peppered throughout most of her works, her self-image should not be seen as a manifestation of the artist’s narcissism, but rather as a liberating exorcism ritual, an expulsion of immobilizing demons.

Material World Knight combines concepts of the “material world” found in Buddhist thought, namely the ultimate destruction of the universe. Against this backdrop of the “material world,” the artist imagines a battle between AI robots and humans. Part of the work was filmed using the urban model landscape at the Tokusatsu (special filming) exhibition of Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, and invited the Japanese cosplay group nyoROBOTtics and mechanical model designer Ikeuchi Hiroto to perform while wearing mechanical models. The exhibition site combines images, Tokusatsu models and landscape design, and integrates various pieces of works implicated by Lu Yang over the years, creating a complete Lu Yang style “material world.”

Lu Yang’s multimedia installations combine video, sculptural elements, lighting, and soundtracks made in collaboration with different musicians. The videos themselves are fast-paced, delivering various types of information at once: highly detailed and sometimes intense digital imagery layered with moving graphics, voiceovers also available as subtitles in translation, and high-energy soundtracks ranging from techno to opera to death metal. The installations can be immersive and overwhelming. Viewers are left with strong impressions, but to grasp the videos in all their detail, viewers would probably have to watch them multiple times. Or you can let them wash over you–colorful and keyed-up, like a music video or a futuristic educational film.

Lu Yang Delusional Crime and Punishment (2016)

The protagonist of this video is Lu Yang herself: Her 3D-scanned head has been mounted on a stock CGI body. First, the figure is 3D printed and packaged with the label “Made by God”, then it’s tortured and drawn into hell. Lu Yang brings up the idea that, if humankind was created by a God, our propensity to sin was preordained, and our arrival in hell inevitable. The video invokes various religions’ symbols and mythologies regarding hell. Music by GAMEFACE.

Lu Yang Delusional Mandala (2015)

The CGI character with Yang’s face returns in this video, a meditation on medicine and technology. Her brain is submitted to a variety of tests discussed in voiceover. The video deals with the idea that technology might elevate humankind. It’s also filled with religious imagery and dancing digital marionettes. Soundtrack by DJ Cavia.

Lu Yang Power of Will - final shooting (2016) & Lu Yang Gong Tau Kite (2016)

This installation–comprising the balloon head and two videos–incorporates elements of two works: As her contribution to the exhibition Smart Illumination Yokohama in Japan in 2016, Lu Yang produced a giant balloon printed with her face–mouth open wide, beams of light erupting from her eyes. At Société, it takes a slightly different form filling two rooms. On one of the two monitors located nearby, viewers will find video documentation of the work set to a soundtrack produced by Yllis. The other monitor shows Lu Yang Gong Tau Kite. In 2016–in Weifang, China–Lu Yang created and flew a giant kite depicting her 3D-scanned face. Her mouth is upturned into something between a smile and a grimace, her eyes are wide, and long strands of her hair snake along in the wind while it flies. The video incorporates footage filmed via drone.