working on some Bitbots icons for a WIP project

In the realm of art, failure has a different currency. Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know. Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest for perfection, or the open-endness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as means to rethink how we understand our place in the world. The inevitable gap between the intention and realization of an artwork makes failure impossible to avoid. This very condition of art-making makes failure central to the complexities of artistic practice and its resonance with the surrounding world. Through failure one has the potential to stumble on the unexpected. When the conventions of representation are no longer fit for purpose, failure can open new possibilities. The judgement involved in naming something a success or a failure is symptomatic of the time and place, and contingent on the critical apparatus one uses to define it. While speculative thought strives for ever-deepening levels of understanding in search for content, irony asks questions, not to receive an answer but to draw out of content and form yet more questions. The ironist deals with the how of something being said rather than the what, paying a distanced attention to the surface of statements so as to identify gaps in knowledge and productive miscommunication. Where we embrace the irony of bad taste, we distance ourselves from the assumed natural order of things.

– FAILURE Documents of contemporary art

In general, the term formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, that is, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects, rather than its narrative, content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of color, brushwork,form,line and composition. Formalism as a critical stance came into being in response to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in which unprecedented emphasis was placed on the purely visual aspects of the work. In 1890 the Post-Impressionist painter Maurice Denise wrote, ‘Remember, that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colors arranged in a certain order.’ Denis emphasised that aesthetic pleasure was to be found in the painting itself, not its subject. Writer Clive Bell formulated the notion of ‘significant form’, that form itself can convey feeling. All these led to Abstract art, an art of pure form.

– The Tate guide to Modern art terms

My piece for CE Contest II 2012, a platform toy worldwide competition based on the CE figure.
I gave this guy the name My name is Hello. I guess you kinda know what he represents yeh~

An exhibition at Milk Tea & Pearl(London), a bubble tea shop, was held in January 2012 to celebrate Pao’s second year of life. Titled Phenomenon No.II(as a major Phenomenon happens on every birthday of Pao), the narrative was created with context of the exhibition space in mind.
Click on the pictures for more photos and h e r e for the full story. Sale of the exhibition publication is also available h e r e