Comix Pulse — Adam Lo’s Solo Exhibition
About Exhibition
Evolution is often understood as a linear progression toward a better state—stronger, smarter, more adaptable. Yet behind every attempt to ‘advance’ lies countless abandoned trajectories: malformed mutations, suppressed desires, forgotten traumas, and forsaken life paths.
Starting from this premise, creator Adam LO made his statement that in the pursuit of ‘improvement’, people continually excise and purify parts of ourselves. What is eliminated becomes the lost versions of ourselves, being exiled into the realms of imagination and dreams, existing only as alternative self of who we might have been in parallel world.
If these repressed fantasies were to take on life, might they be what we call monsters?
This question forms the core idea of LO’s work. Presented in this exhibition, are the pieces that depict the sacrificed forms in the name of becoming ‘better’. Beneath their uncanny appearances, the works reside latent dreams and desires. For LO, people are built upon layers of failure and revision; along the shifting boundary between ‘monstrous’ and the ‘normal’, emerges a more nuanced understanding of life and death, good and evil.
LO’s practice is shaped by a diverse cultural lineage. Influenced by comics and animation, he is equally drawn to the aesthetics of East Asian monster lore—from the mythical beasts of the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海經) to Yōkai (妖怪) in Japanese Ukiyo-e (浮世繪).
At the same time, his training is grounded in Western classical painting, with a particular fascination for religious art and church murals, in their sacred narratives, compositional gravitas, and dramatic use of light. It is clear that Eastern and Western visual languages intersect in LO’s works. The monstrous forms evoke the unease of ancient mythologies, while simultaneously carrying a solemn, almost icon-like presence of religious imagery.
Through this vision of ‘alternative evolution’, the exhibition invites viewers into a world of otherworldly fantasies, to re-embrace the possibilities we have cast aside.
The exhibition features around twenty works across a range of media, including oil painting, digital drawing, ink on paper, gouache on paper, short comics, and illustration books. Together, they reflect the artist’s ongoing experimentation with this concept across different formats.
About Creator
Adam LO
Graduated from The Education University of Hong Kong with a major in Visual Arts. His practice focuses on painting, comics, and mural work, often centred on themes of monsters and the supernatural. He seeks to explore strange forms of life and the subconscious worlds that exist at the edges of reality.
Exhibition Spin-off Event
Exhibition Opening & Meet-the-Creator
About Event
Exhibition Opening & Guided Tour | 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Creator Adam LO will be present at the exhibition opening to guide visitors through the exhibition, offering a first-hand walkthrough of key works on view. He will introduce the core concepts of the exhibition, the development of his practice, and the characters that inhabit his imagery, sharing how these ‘abandoned forms’ emerge from dreams and the subconscious to become the monster-like figures on canvas. The guided tour will also invite visitors to look closely at how works in different media speak to one another. From oil paintings and digital drawings to gouache and ink on paper, as well as short comics and illustration books, revealing how the artist navigates multiple visual languages and bridges East Asian monster aesthetics with Western religious painting traditions.
Meet-the-Creator & Caricature Activity | 2:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Following the opening, the creator will stay on site to do an interactive mini Caricature (似顏繪) session inspired by the idea of ‘monstrous transformation’. In this playful drawing activity, he will use deliberate exaggeration to create spontaneous, one-of-a-kind ‘monsterfied’ portraits for participants, transforming everyone into their own alternative version and become part of the exhibition’s monster universe.
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