Dear friends,
March was a fever dream, April swept by like fresh rain, and now we are at the end of May, with a new season upon us.
At the gallery, we are hard at work preparing for our upcoming exhibition, “Vibe Buster,” a solo show for Virtue Village. The opening will be this Saturday, May 31, from 1-7pm.
As we move into the third year of operations at the gallery, we are thinking obsessively about expansion—not just spatially, across art fairs and external projects, but also conceptually. These ruminations were highlighted during an in-depth conversation with another gallerist recently. We talked about how, for gallerists operating within the brutal mechanisms of the art market, our work can often feel robotic and detached.
For us, the question is how to expand while remaining attached. We have our grounding rituals: Ysabelle writes in her journal every morning, while Willem recently tattooed a measuring tape onto his arm, a permanent reminder of his attachment to the gallery. We touch things all the time; the leaves and flowers on our rooftop, the measuring tapes and rulers and screws. But how does one know when to feel things out, and when to let go?
In a new Q&A with Virtue Village, which will soon be available to read on our website and at our reception desk, we asked them about a phrase they use in their new video, “Every vibe shift is in God’s hands.”
They responded: “It’s about stepping back, giving in to the “vibe” in the air, and trusting your intuition. This is where faith and magic kinda meet. Holding up that sign isn’t about having answers—it’s like a small ritual, a way of tapping into something bigger than us. It’s not about winning or being right; it’s about tuning in. Maybe the most radical form of agency isn’t trying to control everything, but just learning to let go and feel what’s happening.”
We hope to see you at the opening of Virtue Village’s new exhibition, this Saturday May 31, from 1-7pm.
As always, you must request an appointment slot before visiting the show; to do so, please visit our website. We hope to see you soon.
Warmly,
Willem and Ysabelle
NEWS
Zheng Mahler’s multi-part project “What is it like to be a (virtual) bat?” (2022-23) has been acquired by M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Various portions of the project have been shown at Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany; PHD Group and M+ museum, Hong Kong; West Bund Museum, Shanghai; and Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul. The project was commissioned by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany.
The artist duo are also showing Nostalgia Machines (2019) in Hamburg as part of the Chinese Film Festival, “In Between and Never There.” The festival runs through June 22, 2025.
Various works from Sasaoka Yuriko’s recent solo exhibition “Animale” have been acquired by private and institutional collections. Working Koala - Blue (2025) has been adopted into the Akeroyd Collection and Working Horse - Brown (2025) will travel to ZHI Foundation. Other recent acquisitions include LOVERS, which will enter the collection of the Shiga Museum of Art.
A sculpture by Christopher K. Ho has been acquired by EAST Hong Kong. The work will be permanently installed at the main entrance of the building in Tai Koo Shing. It was first displayed at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 in the Encounters sector, curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor.
A solo show by Luo Jr-Shin, “Tomato Seeds Passing Through the Body and Germinating,” is currently on view at Michael Ku gallery in Taipei. Featuring recent sculptural works within large-scale spatial installations, the exhibition touches on processes of sewage, fertilizations, and growth. The project was commissioned by the 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale, and the show runs through July 19, 2025.
Samuel Swope’s work Flying Wheel (Nervous Thrasher) (2024) has been acquired by Cc Foundation in Shanghai. The work was previously shown at PHD Group and current plans, Hong Kong.
A new short animated film, Wildfire Sleepwalking, credits Xi Jiu as its art director. The film is slated for release later this year.
UPCOMING PROJECTS
Lee Eunsae will participate in the group exhibition “Next Painting: As We Are,” at Kukje Gallery in Seoul, opening June 5.
Sasaoka Yuriko presents a newly commissioned work at the Osaka World Expo 2025, opening early June. Concurrently, she will present works from the “Animale” series for a solo show at the National Museum of Art, Osaka this summer. In early 2026, she will open a major retrospective of past and recent works at the Shiga Museum of Art, including the large-scale installations LOVERS (2024), Animale (2024-25), and Planaria (2021).
Zheng Mahler will participate in the group show “The Geopolitics of Infrastructure. Contemporary Perspectives” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), opening June 13, 2025. As part of the exhibition programming, they will also take part in a research summit, taking place from June 14-21 at M HKA. Newly commissioned work will be unveiled at the 2025 Thailand Biennale in Phuket, opening in November 2025 and curated by Arinrung Rungjang, David Teh, Marisa Phandharakrajadej, and Hera Chan.
Michele Chu will debut new work at two exhibitions this autumn. At Aranya Art Center in Beidaihe, she will participate in a show inspired by the Qin Dynasty figure Lady Meng Jiang, organized by guest curator Yuan Fuca and Damien Zhang, Director of the Aranya Art Center. Meanwhile, at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok, works around the theme of “reliquary” will be shown.
RECOMMENDATIONS
This edition’s recommendations were written by Cassie Liu, our new gallery manager. A lover of cats and all things green, Cassie has been instrumental in the gallery’s growth over the past few months, earning her the nickname “Queen of Spreadsheets.” Her recommendations are below:
Patema Inverted (2013)
“A very underrated Japanese anime film.”
L’Artisan Parfumeur’s “Passage D’Enfer”
“Alocasia Frydek: A very elegant indoor plant, and its maintenance is easier than you think!”
“I have two classical albums to recommend: Satie: Avant-dernières pensées by Alexandre Tharaud (2009), and Paris by Hilary Hahn (2021).”
And we recommend Audition by Katie Kitamura, an author who Ysabelle met in Aspen two years back at a writing workshop. Set in two contrapuntal parts, the slim novel confronts the roles we play in our lives, and how we perceive ourselves and others behind those masks.
Happy reading,
Ysabelle and Willem
PHD Group