GORDON CHEUNG | MANY WORLDS, ONE MIND

EXHIBITION| 6 JUNE - 15 August 2026
CLOSE Gallery, Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset TA3 6AE
OPEN THURS & FRI 11-4, SAT 11-3
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This summer, CLOSE Gallery presents a major survey exhibition by Gordon Cheung, on view 6 June - 15 August 2026.

There are artists whose work reflects a single discipline, and there are those whose thinking moves restlessly across many territories. Gordon Cheung belongs firmly to the latter. Raised in London within a family of Hong Kong heritage, Cheung’s work emerges from a rich intersection of cultures and ideas. His practice reflects the experience of displacement not as loss, but as a generative space where histories, aesthetics and philosophies meet.

Growing up between the traditions of East and West, Cheung developed a visual language that moves fluidly between classical art history and contemporary technological innovation. His work carries the influence of Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, while simultaneously engaging with the long arc of European painting, global economics and the forces that shape modern civilisation.

At the centre of Cheung’s work lies an expansive curiosity about systems and the invisible structures that govern belief, value and power. His research frequently turns to the origins of global trade and the early formations of modern capitalism, including the speculative markets of seventeenth-century Holland and the famous tulip mania often cited as the first financial bubble. These historical moments resonate strongly with our own era of accelerated global markets and digital economies.

Many of Cheung’s works are constructed upon pages of stock listings from the Financial Times, embedding the pulse of global finance into the very foundation of the image. Across this ground he constructs landscapes that at first appear reminiscent of classical European painting, romantic horizons, echoes of the Dutch Golden Age, and fragments of art historical memory. Yet closer examination reveals something entirely contemporary.

Cheung’s works are often produced through a complex synthesis of digital technologies, scientific processes and sculptural construction, including elements of 3D printing and digitally mediated surfaces. What initially appears painterly is in fact the result of advanced technological experimentation. The landscapes become hybrid territories where data, economics and imagination coexist.

Within these works, illusion and reality continually shift. Classical imagery dissolves into digital structures; historical references are reframed through the language of modern innovation. The result is a body of work that feels both ancient and futuristic landscapes of speculation where art history, finance and cultural identity converge.

Born in London in 1975 to parents from Hong Kong, Cheung studied painting at Central Saint Martins before completing his Master of Fine Art at Royal College of Art in 2001. His work is held in major international public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the British Museum.

Many Worlds, One Mind brings together key works from across Cheung’s practice, offering a rare opportunity to encounter the breadth of an artist whose thinking moves across economics, art history, technology and culture. Through Cheung’s work we are invited to consider how the systems that shape our world trade, belief, markets and memory continue to define the landscapes we inhabit, both real and imagined.

In Cheung’s hands, art becomes a lens through which the invisible architectures of contemporary life are revealed poetic, questioning and profoundly of our time.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born 1975 in London to Chinese parents, contemporary multi-media artist Gordon Cheung has developed an innovative approach to making art, which blurs virtual and actual reality to reflect on the existential questions of what it means to be human in civilisations with histories written by victors. Cheung raises questions and critiques the effects of global capitalism, its underlying mechanisms of power on our perception of identity, territory and sense of belonging. These narratives are refracted through the prisms of culture, mythology, religion, and politics into dreamlike spaces of urban surreal worlds that are rooted in his in-between identity.

Cheung graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1998 from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and earned his Masters of Fine Arts in 2001 from the Royal College of Art in London. Select solo shows include Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall UK, The Light that Burns Twice as Bright, Cristea Gallery, London UK, Here Be Dragons, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham, UK and New Order Vanitas, Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, West Palm Beach, FL, USA. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Whitworth Art Museum in Manchester, Royal College of Art in London, and the British Museum, amongst others. He lives and works in London.

The Josefowitz Collection

Today, as we present MANY WORLDS, ONE MIND, we are honoured to include works from the Ellen Melas Kyriazi Josefowitz prestigious collection whose generosity, intellect and curiosity become woven into the artist's life and work. So who was she? An art historian, publisher, advisor, scholar and collector of exceptional vision, Ellen approached art not as an object of ownership but as a lifelong conversation. Together with her partner she built a collection of a profound and enduring understanding of art's place within the wider history of human civilization. Thus the work of Cheung embraced her passion for art as a metaphor for transferring stories and histories through the visual arts. 

Ellen's relationship with Gordon Cheung extended far beyond collecting. She was one of the great patrons of his generation; a patron in the truest and most meaningful sense of the word. She understood that artists are formed not only through making but through travel, research, dialogue and the pursuit of knowledge. Her support enabled and encouraged much of the Silk Road investigation that became fundamental to Gordon's practice. Through journeys to Dunhuang and the ancient routes that connected East and West, and through countless conversations about history, culture, empire and exchange, Ellen helped nurture a way of seeing that continues to resonate throughout Gordon's work today. We are so lucky to have some of these pieces on the walls of Close Gallery. We are equally grateful to Ellen's family and estate for recognising the importance of this history and allowing these works to be placed thoughtfully rather than dispersed without context. It is our hope that their future custodians, whether private collectors or institutions, will understand and value the extraordinary story they embody. 

Throughout this exhibition we encounter deserts and ruins, lost civilisations and trade routes, myths and empires, systems of exchange, and the rise and fall of cultures. These themes are not merely subjects; they are investigations into how humanity remembers itself. Cheung’s landscapes become repositories of memory where history, economics, technology and spirituality collide. They ask us to consider what survives, what disappears, and what remains embedded within the collective imagination.

Gordon is not only an exceptional artist; he is one of the most thoughtful and intellectually rigorous voices working today. His work transcends the immediacy of the contemporary world, drawing together ancient histories and future possibilities, myth and technology, beauty and collapse. Few artists possess such an ability to navigate between worlds while revealing the invisible connections that bind them together. Please come and take a trip to Somerset and see the show. 

Freeny Yianni
Founder, CLOSE Gallery