LAURENS TAN 谭思考

Chengyu City is a series of digital prints that visually intersects notions of cultural erosion and cultural fabrication, taking the chengyu, the classical Chinese four-character idiom, as its point of departure. Accumulated over centuries as distillations of wisdom from the past, chengyu have become a vernacular shorthand for reflecting on how modern life is conducted. Tan applies them like a chop hovering over city skylines, freighting the aspirational architecture of new China with the weight of inherited meaning.

Happy Toy takes as its starting point an iconic object now only occasionally spotted in village corner shops in Beijing, shelved amongst ornamental miscellanea, exuding a bright, dynamic sense of joy and celebration.

Like modern Chinese birthday cakes, the toy is intentionally overcoloured and overdecorated: the epitome of what the West might call bad taste. Its gesture is one of giving, of abundance. And yet, despite having nothing distinctly Chinese in its design, the toy remains unmistakably Chinese.

Depth of Ease continues Tan's investigation of language, meaning, and communication, exploring the pairing of visual symbols with their literal denotations and cultural connotations. The sculptures function as a collection of ideographs, employing visual puns and witticisms that draw on the study of foreign language, incorporating duality and multiple meanings throughout. A central motif is the sanlunche, the three-wheeled rickshaw-like bicycle that serves as a staple of transportation and the transfer of goods across China.

Babalogic takes language and communication as a metaphor for the bridges that connect, and divide, communities and cultures. The series poses a Babylonian prognosis: are we bridging the linguistic barriers that cast us apart, as in the biblical story of the tower, or is a different model at work? The spiralling tiers of a Brueghelian tower provide the series its central image, its ascending form tracing a trajectory from attitudes toward the foreign to a state of entrancement by global pressures.

Adapt Enforce names both a slogan and a preoccupation that has underlain Tan's motivation for making art since 1990. The phrase describes the vacillation between an assertive and an innocuous demeanour when transacting with society, a tension made acutely tangible by the experience of being a migrant. The need to assimilate, to remain buoyant across unfamiliar places, keeps this vacillation foremost. Conditioning becomes a modus operandi: a way of moving through the world without being overly burdened by questions of entitlement, appearance, and expectation.

Risk as Pleasure explores the architecture of desire, the constructed interiors of casinos, pleasure resorts, and gaming environments that stage risk as spectacle. Inspired by Dr. Daniel Kahneman's RC Chambers Research Memorial Lecture on the psychology of risk (University of Sydney, 2003), the series draws on Tan's sustained interest in games and entertainment technology to examine the seductive logic of chance and the environments engineered around it.

Chinese Restaurant examines the suburban Chinese restaurant as a site of cultural negotiation and fabricated identity. At its centre is the Mars Café, a Chinese restaurant in Thirroul established in 1961, whose logo and signage, drawn from across its different eras, form the visual basis for the work. Tan regards establishments like Mars Café as pioneers rather than compromises. Their interpretation of the Cantonese menu required creative strategies to make the foreign local: a process of adaptation that produced its own kind of forged authenticity, a quasi-exoticism that is neither wholly Chinese nor wholly Australian but distinctly both.

Mechanics of Fantasy brings together works from Tan's sustained engagement with the globalised design of gambling, gaming technology, and the visual language of the Las Vegas tradition. Spanning sculpture, installation, and 3D animation, the series adapts the ornamentation, signage, and spatial logic of pleasure resorts and casinos, environments engineered entirely around risk, spectacle, and desire.