-014 Andrew Luk
If there is one thing that you can change in a previous project of yours, what would it be?
photograph by Tommy Vo
Change is a funny word.
In this context, it implies some sort of regret about a previous project. As someone currently updating their website, it would be psychotic not to have regrets.
Editing the website is like taking inventory of my past creative deeds, dead souls with still unclear measures of success. Initially, there is a sense of confrontation between the current and past, as if the past work is not my own. It is a Dickens-esque moment of ghostly self-reckoning for which the reasonable response is to be surprised and slightly horrified.
An artist’s website is a carefully amalgamated series of code by the artist, who usually does not understand its inner workings. Serving as a public-facing archive that the artist maintains. Unless the work has received press, the website might be the artist’s sole testament of having made ridiculous art things that their family would never understand. An effervescence, both liberating and damning. It is also probably the longest ongoing durational piece of “work” any artist has, often neglected for years on end.
With the privilege of speaking to and about the world in a way that is detached from certain frictions comes the self-imposed frictions of art making: the concerns for intentionality, the intensity and direction of gesture, the desires and expectations placed on artwork, the role of the artist, etc. These are the hot coals I drag myself over as I drag and drop images, refine an incoherent sentence, and second-guess myself through the entirety of a website’s content in the age of instagram. Just as the standards of website design have changed, the expectations for art have changed as well. Most importantly, to return to the question, artists can change, as can the expectations they have for themselves. And that truly is a wonderful thing.
If I should die first, my partner has threatened to burn all my earthly possessions lest they get saddled with the thankless management of my estate. I think this is splendid and I look forward to what it would mean. To think about legacy in 2025 is to pursue immortality like some paranoid dictator. There is learning in updating one’s website: it is self-reflection, but also an exercise in letting go and moving on.
Andrew Luk Artist Website, 8 Feb. 2011. Internet Archive. Accessed Sep 15 2025.
Andrew Luk Artist Website, 21 Oct. 2016. Internet Archive. Accessed Sep 15 2025.
Andrew Luk Artist Website, 22 Mar. 2018. Internet Archive. Accessed Sep 15 2025.
Andrew Luk Artist Website, 13 Aug. 2021. Internet Archive. Accessed Sep 15 2025.
About Andrew Luk:
Andrew Luk (b. 1988, New Jersey, USA) is an artist working between Hong Kong and New York. He received his MFA in sculpture in 2025 from Yale University. Luk works across a range of media examining the intricacies of the human experience as well as the myths and histories associated with civilisation building. Investigating the creases between binaries such as culture and nature, human and non-human, and the personal and the collaborative, Luk’s sculptures and installations explore utopian desires of perfection and their dystopian repercussions. His diverse practice is united through an exploration of ideological superstructures and their systems of expression — delicately tracing connections across disciplines, speculating on potential futures and revealing expressions of beauty, preservation and entropy.
Luk’s solo exhibitions include “Appropriate Responses for Featherless Bipeds with Broad Flat Nails” at chi K11 Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018). His works have also been shown at various group exhibitions including “New Beginnings” at Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong, 2022); “Next Act” at Asia Society (Hong Kong, 2019); “Very Natural Actions” at Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong, 2019); “Serious Games” at HOW Art Museum (Shanghai, 2019) and “A Tree Fell in the Forest, and No One’s There” at the Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2018).
Website: andrewluk.com
All images courtesy of Andrew Luk