The Collector | The divine onion and sound waves that move matter – Hong Kong exhibition’s New Age riffs

During Art Basel Hong Kong, Adrian Wong Ho-yin and Shane Aspegren conducted three artistic interventions that were based on New Age healing experiences: a therapeutic bath of sound made by gongs, energy cleansing sessions with spiritual gurus, and a light and sound performance using “specific frequencies of the cosmos”. The two American artists conducted the sessions in March not just as an exploration of mystical meditation but also as an intellectual exercise on how beliefs inspired by Eastern philosophy are being reimported from the West to a place like Hong Kong.

Their new exhibition, at Rossi & Rossi gallery in Wong Chuk Hang, is a continuation of that exercise, featuring images set in frames with mini speak­ers emitting soothing music and carpets with patterns depicting the inside of an onion – a symbol of eternity.

The prints are a series of pink and turquoise rings, wheels and symmetrical shapes that at first glance appear to be the products of an artist emerging from deep meditation.

Wong explains that the patterns are the visualisation of the sound waves produced by Aspegren’s music when played at a loud volume against a steel plate, and they are studies of how something with no measur­able physical mass can move something that heavy.

“We didn’t draw these. We were research­ing the physics behind the ability of sound waves to impact matter. Shane often finds things on his desk rearranged after a recording session. Things get moved by sound and we wanted to clarify what kind of patterns were generated by what sounds,” Wong explains.