Hong Kong Arts Center, Wan Chai｜Comix Pulse — Adam Lo’s Solo Exhibition

Description

Evolution is often understood as a linear progression toward a better state—stronger, smarter, more adaptable. Yet behind every attempt to ‘advance’ lies countless abandoned trajectories: malformed mutations, suppressed desires, forgotten traumas, and forsaken life paths.

Starting from this premise, creator Adam LO made his statement that in the pursuit of ‘improvement’, people continually excise and purify parts of ourselves. What is eliminated becomes the lost versions of ourselves, being exiled into the realms of imagination and dreams, existing only as alternative self of who we might have been in parallel world.

If these repressed fantasies were to take on life, might they be what we call monsters?

This question forms the core idea of LO’s work. Presented in this exhibition, are the pieces that depict the sacrificed forms in the name of becoming ‘better’. Beneath their uncanny appearances, the works reside latent dreams and desires. For LO, people are built upon layers of failure and revision; along the shifting boundary between ‘monstrous’ and the ‘normal’, emerges a more nuanced understanding of life and death, good and evil.

LO’s practice is shaped by a diverse cultural lineage. Influenced by comics and animation, he is equally drawn to the aesthetics of East Asian monster lore—from the mythical beasts of the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海經) to Yōkai (妖怪) in Japanese Ukiyo-e (浮世繪).

At the same time, his training is grounded in Western classical painting, with a particular fascination for religious art and church murals, in their sacred narratives, compositional gravitas, and dramatic use of light. It is clear that Eastern and Western visual languages intersect in LO’s works. The monstrous forms evoke the unease of ancient mythologies, while simultaneously carrying a solemn, almost icon-like presence of religious imagery.

Through this vision of ‘alternative evolution’, the exhibition invites viewers into a world of otherworldly fantasies, to re-embrace the possibilities we have cast aside.

The exhibition features around twenty works across a range of media, including oil painting, digital drawing, ink on paper, gouache on paper, short comics, and illustration books. Together, they reflect the artist’s ongoing experimentation with this concept across different formats.

About Creator

Adam LO

Graduated from The Education University of Hong Kong with a major in Visual Arts. His practice focuses on painting, comics, and mural work, often centred on themes of monsters and the supernatural. He seeks to explore strange forms of life and the subconscious worlds that exist at the edges of reality.