Hong Kong-born artist Lam Tung-pang deconstructs the past to build a future in Taipei show

His high spirits are mirrored by the bright and lofty design of the space, which the Hong Kong-based gallery opened in 2024. Yet, the exhibition – titled “Everyone’s Journey Toward Faith is Different” – is steeped in melancholia, a search for hope in a fractured world.

A sense of discombobulation begins at the entrance, where texts appear jumbled and flipped over, the word “faith” is disassembled, and the question “Are you being described by history?” is tantalisingly obscured.

“I want to massage people’s brains as soon as they walk in,” Lam says with a grin, as he strides eagerly toward a giant kinetic sculpture that has turned out just as he envisioned even though it was built remotely in Hong Kong by a film props fabricator.

Praying Hands (2025) is nearly four metres (13ft) high, and is both playful and macabre: Albrecht Dürer’s famous 1508 symbol of piety magnified manifold, printed onto plywood and cut at the joints into a 23-part, skeletal mobile.