The Engineers is a solo exhibition by Cole Lu as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB2024): Nurture Gaia, which will run from October 24, 2024 to February 25, 2025.  

The Engineers is a site-specific installation at The Museum and Library of Abbots of Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, a first-class royal temple complex built in the early nineteenth century.  Combining Thai, Chinese, Khmer, and European influences, the temple is home to the first  Buddhist educational institution and is also the ordination site for many Chakri kings and royal  family members. The Gothic-style Museum and Library serves as a significant repository of Thai Buddhist knowledge, housing countless religious artifacts and monastic utensils associated with  the four Supreme Patriarchs who resided at the temple.  

The title of the exhibition references Lu’s questioning of engineers as architects of humanity, and  the myth-making origins of our social hierarchy. Through two large-scale, free-standing doors  burned from Neem (Sao Dao) wood and linen, Lu explores time and time travel, historical texts,  religious scriptures, mythologies, and ancient artifacts. Using fire to mark his gestures, he also  returns to a possible origin of storytelling before social construction, delving into issues of  history, memory, and home. The paired doors echo the space’s original entries, acting as portals  into an infinite Universal cycle between birth and death.  

More information can be found here.

Nova Contemporary presents In saying these things, I went to sleep, a group exhibition of works by Cole Lu, Christian Quin Newell, and Supawich Weesapen. The exhibition draws its title from Of Virtue, a fourth-century text by the Alexandrian alchemist Zosimos, in which he uses dream to decipher the mysteries of the waking world.

 Inspired by this sense of alchemical slippage—where boundaries shift between slumber and waking, solid and liquid, and body and spirit—the three artists take on the role of shapeshifters, engaging in a kinetic play with the elements. Here, matter is torn apart and reassembled, creating new forms of substance and self. Their works ruminate in an instability of form, offering passages we can traverse on route to becoming.

Lu’s works embody calcination, the first stage of alchemy, where intense burning and decomposition is used to reduce matter to its purest form. He intricately burns onto copper and linen, initiating a process that is simultaneously destructive and generative. Depicting images of the mythical and premodern, including an engraving of the Black Sun—representative of the shadow self and renewal through darkness–he presents a space where material, identity, and consciousness can be broken down and reinvented.

Here, the gallery takes up the fourth element, becoming a spatial vessel for dynamic elemental dialogue. The three artists capture an impulse to compose and recompose, making room for us to transfigure, transmute, and ascent. 

More information can be found here.

Join Nova Contemporary and Bangkok Kunsthalle for a conversation between Cole Lu and Hera Chan, Adjunct Curator, Asia-Pacific, supported by Asymmetry Art Foundation, at Tate. 

 The event will take place next to Lu’s previous studio at Bangkok Kunsthalle, where he was artist-in-residence. His completed works will be on view at the Museum and Library of the Abbots of Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale 2024 (BAB2024): Nurture Gaia, from October 24, 2024, to February 25, 2025. 

 The two will examine Lu’s engagement with materiality, alchemical processes, and writing. They will explore themes including portals and travel, and the interplay between exile, diaspora, and history. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session. 

This event is supported by the Culture Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand.

More information can be found here.

Bangkok Kunsthalle hosted Cole Lu as its artist in residence during production for his exhibition The Engineers, co-hosted by the Bangkok Art Biennale and Nova Contemporary. The completed works are now on view at the Museum and Library of Abbots of Wat Bowonniwet Vihara until 28 Feb, 2025.

See the production video of The Engineers here.

Each Modern is thrilled to announce “Interstellar Traveler to Home” by Cole Lu and Djordje Ozbolt in Taiwan. This captivating showcase delves deep into the intricate interplay between personal narratives and broader cultural, political, and historical contexts, offering a thought-provoking exploration of human perception and evolution.

Djordje Ozbolt’s paintings emanate a sculptural presence that captivates the imagination, blending clear forms with expansive classical backgrounds to create a visual language that transcends traditional boundaries. His vibrant use of colors and whimsical narratives challenge the viewer’s expectations, inviting them to explore the depths of memory, personal identity, and societal norms through a surreal and thought-provoking lens.

Cole Lu’s artistic vision is a testament to his unique approach to image-making, where he skillfully reshapes familiar atmospheres with a quasi-prophetic fervor, infusing his works with a strikingly innovative essence. Through intentional use of color palettes and expressive forms reminiscent of poetry and literature, Lu’s creations exude a sense of drama and rugged beauty, inviting viewers to embark on a journey of introspection and discovery.

The exhibition will open on 20 July, from 4 p.m. with an artist talk of Cole and Djordje in conversation with curator Alex Jen. The reception will follow at 5.30 p.m.

Watch Cole’s interview here.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

Cole Lu: Stoicheion: July 12 – September 15, 2024

In Stoicheion, New York-based artist Cole Lu examines established social hierarchies and their myth-making origins. "Stoicheion," the Greek title of Euclid's Elements and Aristoxenus's Elements of Harmonics, has held various meanings, including “the length of the shadow of a sundial,” “the stars or astral bodies as elements of fire,” or more commonly “the smallest parts of anything which stand in relation to one another.” Like a makeshift nursery from Ridley Scott's Raised by Wolves, Cole Lu's dodecahedron shelter presents the viewer with an otherworldly space to consider the fundaments of "humanity."

Cole Lu’s Stoicheion suggests the site of an archeological dig featuring cast concrete reliefs and an excavation sheltering system covered by linen. Imagery is burnt into the fabric, incised into concrete, and charred into the wood to recompose the beginning of beginnings through these fragments and "relics." Moving through material, language, and various mark-making gestures, Stoicheion tells the story of a new possible foundation.

For more information visit here.

Herald St is delighted to announce Amnesia, an exhibition of new works by Cole Lu taking place in the gallery’s East London premises. Featuring burnt linen and birch panels alongside large-scale sculptures incised in minute detail, the presentation questions language, contexts, and dogmas of historicisation. Lu exposes humanity’s ‘collective amnesia’, looking back to an existence before socially-imposed beliefs and rituals and yearning for an unadulterated state of being. He references an amalgamation of sources, widely ranging from prehistoric cave markings, Greek mythology, canonical twentieth century art and literature, and popular sci-fi cinema, steeping their events and characters with his own lived experience.

For more information, visit here.

Cole Lu will present new work with Herald St at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024.

Cole Lu will present new work with Herald St at Frieze London 2023.

Inpatient Press is pleased to announce their latest publication FIRST PYLON by Cole Lu, a compendium of the artist's vellum illustrations and writing. Melding mythological references with personal history, FIRST PYLON gathers the precursor illustrations to his pieces made of burnt wood panels and linen, accompanied by a corresponding collection of his poetry and writing, tracing what came before the fire and envisioning a new mythos born from beyond the flame. With an introduction by Paul Legault.

Please join Cole and Inpatient Press on 5 October 6-8 pm for the launch party at Mast Books (72 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009), with a reading of Paul Legault, Kim Rosenfield, and Chloe Tsolakoglou, coinciding with an installation at the bookstore.

Reading begins at 7 pm.

Salon Mondialité is an electro-acoustic musical performance and video installation by musician, producer, and vocalist Miho Hatori that explores themes of memory, identity, and colonialism through kaleidoscopic and expansive dream-pop atmospheres and hypnotic rhythms. Hatori combines composed and improvised music, experimenting with the structure of a “talk-show” to create a listening environment where nostalgia for the past and possibilities for the future co-exist. Hatori’s “talk show” substitutes traditional segments with “sound stories” and features onstage collaborations with Hatori's friends and invited guests.

For this performance at EMPAC, Hatori’s guests include musicians Patrick Higgins and Michael Beharie, and cross-media artists Steffani Jemison and Cole Lu.

Find out more about the event here.

The exhibition Back to School will present childhood drawings from a group of New York-based artists, taking them back to the original impulse from which their practice started. Very early works by artists often remain unshown. But while the 'artist as child' might not yet have elaborate artistic skills at their disposal, their first work often reveals traces of themes, forms, and perspectives that prove essential later in their career. The exhibition is a celebration of the passion, angst, curiosity, and freedom of the first pieces by artists who have now made a career from their unique way of looking at the world. What has remained, and what can be regained from reflecting on their earliest creations? This presentation is less interested in the image of childhood as a screen for the projection of adult fantasies or psychoanalytical analysis, and instead offers an artistic perspective, considering what these works meant to their makers."

Participating artists:

Rachel Rossin, Ivana Bašić, Anna K.E., Cole Lu, Florian Meisenberg, Tin Nguyen, and Harry Gould Harvey IV.

On view September 21st–November 11th, 2023 at Plank Road, Ridgewood, NY.

Find out more here.

112 pages

Melding historical and literary references with poignant personal experiences, Cole Lu’s work tells stories of dissonance and longing through spiraling odysseys anchored by obscure characters of ancient mythology, a motley assemblage of demigods, daemons, and spirits. First Pylon is a compendium of Lu's vellum drawings which are the precursors to his pieces made of burnt wood panels and linen, accompanied by a corresponding collection of his poetry and writing. With his burned work, Lu returns to the origin of storytelling by writing with fire. In First Pylon, Lu traces what came before the fire and envisions a new mythos born from beyond the flame.

Purchase a copy of the book here.