Young previously found recognition for his faux zoology and pseudo anthropological studies of fungi and gay cruising. This time, he dispensed with the live subject altogether and turned the Hong Kong exhibition into a ghostly aquarian pet shop. Rows of watery glass cubes line a hobbyist’s dream adventure space. Some of the aquaria are fitted with fish castles, others bear traces of photosynthetic activity induced by the purple fluorescent light hues typical of this environment.
But there are no fish. A single net miserably dangled over a bucket reminds anyone seduced by this sci-fi hall of mirrors that all this engineering is nothing lest life – and thus peril – are a key part of it. Sadly, Yeung seems to have missed his own point here and, as he did in some earlier work, the lesson slips past the viewer. This fishbowl universe is easy sea comfort but ultimately no sushi.
