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In Transcendence: the Seen and Unseen explores spiritual and scientific explanations of reality through the quantifying elements beyond the confines of the 3rd Dimension.This body of work engages within metaphysical, religious, and empirical understandings in navigating complex relationships between realms of the unknown. Following the ‘seen and unseen’ times before, during and after our existence, the work discusses and interplay between soul and science, being and universe, tangible and intangible to derive and acceptance of the unknown.In questioning the past, present and future, we move past the capacity of a singular time line and focus purely on the scientific and spiritual experiences that are constantly occurring. Though the works may seem isolated, their intrinsic value lies in their interconnectivity between spacial parts to underline our being as both a unique and connected substance of the universe. Sometimes in conflict, contrast and at times harmonious fusion the exhibition directs at the chemistry of each work and the viewers place within the space.
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Whereabouts
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'Solastalgia' Group Exhibition
Group Show: 'Solastalgia', Space 2, Sol Gallery, 10 May -21 May 2023
Opening Reception: Thursday 11th May 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm 
Exhibition in Collaboration with: Vivienne Adeney, Maria Flores, Mya Cook

https://solgallery.com.au/events/solastalgia
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Yellow Constructions
2022
Copper Monotype, Drypoint, Roll up

Yellow Constructions responds to the reductive, digital codification of the Asian experience within Western society. Heavy borders, rigid structures, and elongated forms that fade in and out visualize my first-hand encounters with dislocation as a second-generation Asian-Australian. A single streak of yellow represents the historical and ongoing objectification of Asians within Australia. The visual codes allude to language barriers as well as the emotional and cultural separation that incoming immigrants face on arrival to unfamiliar shores. Mapping the hidden journeys and anonymity of Asian-Australians living in contemporary Australian society. The sparse, gridded horizons and yellow geometric forms speak to the isolation and disorientation that many migrant families experience as they negotiate unfamiliar systems of western society, as well as the way that colour is appropriated for framing racial stereotypes. The work represents my ongoing navigation of the dichotomies within my own Asian-Australian identity.

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Yellow 
2022
Screen Print on Polycarbonate

Yellow Reclaims the color of such which is previously defined in racial terms as Asian. Cultivating a gradient of yellow, the work depicts how Asians are perceived in voided western systems with voided plains and an infinite plain. Working in and out, this installation examines how we view color and race on an objective and subjective level.

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Light Installation 
2022
Fluorescent Light Tubes, Light Gels

Based on the formations of Western cities, colours of yellow and red are poised through these installment images to discuss the focal and poignant discussion of Racial displacement and isolation. These works were made in researching how light can be used to direct theoretical and political issues.

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The Anthropocene 
2022
Digital Image

Based on the ‘Anthropocene’, a term defining a unit of time where human activity started to have a consequential impact on earths ecosystem, this project discusses the disparity between scientific and social notions of the ‘end’, as humanity neglects their implicit causation of a sixth extinction event. Through this narrative multiple conceptual intersections collide, constructing a subjective and objective based approach that warps together notions of migration, displacement, socioecology, and biopolitics. This project hoped to re-define landscape imaging, transcending colonial notions of environmental expression to contrast the decay of ecology with that of the ‘sublime’. To journey through an experience of meditative and research, I will work towards the visualisation of human future, bringing together quantitive sensations that relate to a theoretical exploration of futurism, minimalism and existentialism. In positioning ones practice in a research based settings, the work and process expand on my own sense of ‘place’, leaning from a generation of migrant family history to decipher the effects of climate change that stands across multi-faceted systems. This builds upon an ‘intersectional analysis’ of the ‘Anthropocene’ that will follow a visual experience of the post-human era combined with the social and psychological effects of ‘Globalisation’.

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Sensation Landscapes
2022, 2021
Hard Ground Etching, Aquatint, Drypoint, Roll Up, Copper Monotype
Exhibited at Ladder Art Space, 2022

We perceive life through subjective impressions, living with no objective reality and in our own singular dimensions. Floating ethereal clouds disintegrate into the open sky. The landscapes seem to constantly blur - motionless, yet fading into the distance, blankly objectifying the structures of the world. The earth’s movement is a constant, flowing oscillation - where mountains peak and rivers fall. As music drowns perspective, replaying and skipping reflects the rapid warping of new landscapes. Tumbling and turning across open fields, motion bleaches colours inside and around the frame, spewing evocations of momentary presence. The passage of time seems transient, during which waves and fields ride high in front of an ethereal sky. Our own reality or being is based on empirical data that can only be collected by our subjective minds. Nothing about our presence is based in objective truth. This instance of works slides multiples of physical qualities in the world across our view. Each different process based series has a variation of sensations, covering tone, line, colour, light and texture throughout. Scanning constantly across our eyes are these blurred physical properties that seem to cumulate into objects we know through our minds collecting and consolidating tangible data. Time seems to become ethereal, elevating our journey above our narrative based lives, as we become able to reflect upon and reason with the past, present and future.

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Digital Playgrounds
2021
Digital Image

Made during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Digital Playgrounds works toward how human minds move through virtual and imagined plains during tumultuous times. Either through the virtual, psychedelic or intended denial, this body of work became a playful way to display structures and playgrounds as a direct answer for escapism.

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Digital Landscapes
2020
Digital Image

Finding a place during times of isolation and peril, the works are built around race-based matrixes. These have been manipulated and digitally changed into open scapes, wide plains, and alienating fields. These works have directed future projects, yet as it was acts as the first instances of Race-based landscapes.

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GOOK Series
2020
Digital Image, Light Installation

Reclaiming a racially negative phrase used against traditional Asians, these works are photographs around a light installation. In exposing GOOK in bright and direct lights with minimal noise or background, the work acts to reclaim the phrase in an act of power rather than hate.

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© 2025 Michael Lye
 

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