Lu Yang at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Fondation Louis Vuitton's "Open Space" is a programme dedicated to the most contemporary expressions of creativity. Several times each year, national and international artists are invited to create specific projects for one of the galleries in Frank Gehry’s building. Open Space actively supports emerging contemporary creation, providing the opportunity for a first personal exhibition in a museum institution and encouraging production of a new work.
Previous Open Space edition featured artists such as Xie Lei, Bianca Bondi, Jean Claracq or Jean-Marie Appriou.

Lu Yang was born in China in 1984 and lives and works in Shanghai
and Tokyo. He graduated from the China Academy of Art’s New Media Art Department in Hangzhou. Lu Yang is a multidisciplinary artist taking inspiration and resources from Anime, gaming and Sci-fi subcultures. He explores his fantasies through mediums including 3D animation, immersive video game installation, holographic, live performances, virtual reality, and computer programming.
Lu has collaborated with scientists, psychologists, performers, designers, experimental composers, Pop Music producers, robotics labs, and celebrities throughout his practice.

For Open Space #14, his first solo exhibition in a French institution, Lu Yang conceives a unique video installation centered around his new film DOKU The Flow, the second chapter of the “DOKU” series. Derived from the Japanese word DOKUSHO DOKUSHI, meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone,” DOKU is a virtual character created from the digitization of the artist’s own body. The film depicts the solitary adventures of this multi-faced avatar through which Lu Yang transcends the boundaries of the physical body, exploring a new form of freedom through digital reincarnation.

Doku is a concept that Yang explored for several years. For him, Doku is an extension of his soul in the digital realm, separate from his physical body: “It is a copy of my soul reincarnated into the virtual world.” Slipping in and out of these digital skins becomes a way to experience multiple embodied lives, breaking away from western, binary ideas surrounding life and death. “When I look at Doku, I sense my soul coming out of my body, like a near-death experience: looking at the body that is my own, but that which has nothing to do with me.”

More than just a reflection on the double existence and virtual identity of its artist, Doku the Flow delves further into the idea that younger generations are forming deep connections with reality through technology. Thus, the online world becomes a space of total freedom, allowing anyone to live out their dreams. It's no longer about discussing the boundary between the real and the virtual, but rather about placing them on an equal footing, viewing them as two "vases communicants".

In perspective with the architecture that houses it, which beckons the journey towards unknown worlds, Lu Yang's exhibition is truly an experience of drift, but also of dislocation. Faced with these works, there are few reference points, yet one easily projects oneself into them as in a dream, allowing oneself to be carried away.