Artist: THE BOYS OF SUMMER Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility
Toronto
Joined January 2010
- Tweets4.4K
- Following1.8K
- Followers7.9K
- Likes15.4K
Pinned Tweet
📣🌟Important announcement:🌟📣
Workers’ Playtime is the title of my solo exhibition running at DE SARTHE in Hong Kong from October 10 to November 21.
I have been working on the pieces for this exhibition non-stop for the past year: a set of sculptures that collage electro-mechanical pinball components, and a suite of video game levels. If you missed me at one of the parties or one of the conferences or something like that over the past 12 months, it’s because I was in my studio having the time of my life making these bizarre, hilarious, clever machines. I will say more about the work in the days to come. I think they’re fresh, I think they're funny; I think they are a little bit heartbreaking. I think you probably haven’t seen anything like them.
I am proud beyond words to be presenting this work at @deSarthe, a gallery that has assembled possibly the most exciting roster of digital artists of any gallery in the international art community today. That they have built this roster on top of their 40-year history of dealing in modern masters speaks to their rigor and commitment to pushing this new frontier in contemporary art.
If you are in Hong Kong next month, please let me know so I can send you an invitation to the reception. If you can’t make it, hopefully I’ll see you soon.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
A big challenge is that the art market calendar demands artists produce lots of output, all the time. Not even for money, but for attention. Disappear for a year to make good work, and you're basically ded. Presented with a magic button that will make work 4x more generic, but 10x faster, most artists will feel they have no choice but to push it. I don't blame them.
Issue is exacerbated by the phenomenon whereby few people actually care/can tell whether the work is good or not.
I’m seeing the beginning of some very talented artists getting a kind of machine intelligence blindness. I’m watching the quality of their work atrophy. Take a minute to look at the work that you were making three years ago and now. Make sure that the tools you’re now building aren’t accidentally turning your aesthetics, and even your concepts, to mush.
Thanks, Phil!
The prose here is a bit sloppy because it's transcribed from a talk where I could vamp and shake my hips, but the ideas in here are valid, I think.
The TLDR: this is the next big art medium, most art world artists interloping into games are doing it wrong.
This is such a great overview of Art Games by @mitchellfchan at @rhizome - this will be such an exciting medium over the next decade with on-chain coordination, agents, and real-time generative media.
cdn.rhizome.org/editorial/20…
For the past two weeks, I’ve had the unbelievable good fortune to be the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Vu-Chu Digital Arts Residency in Hong Kong.
Yesterday, to close out the residency, we invited some artists, curators, and academics for a lively conversation between Sunny Cheung (curator, M+) and myself.
This program gave me with a base of operations during a critical 2-week span of my career, allowing me to make some crucial connections to the Hong Kong art scene while I opened my first ever solo show in Asia. Also: this place is swaggy as hell! 😎
Many, many thanks to @collectionist and @jeannievu for their support, always.
"Agential representation remains largely illegible to a field of critics and curators who spent fifty years leaning on critical hermeneutics or easily unpackable symbolic representation as their standard rubrics for understanding an art piece."
My lecture on art games, originally presented at @NEWINC Demo Day, is transcribed and published on @rhizome
I regret that it wasn't meaner.
rhizome.org/editorial/2026/o…
Installation shots from Workers’ Playtime, my solo exhibition at @deSarthe in Hong Kong. On display until November 21.
It has been a tremendous privilege to be the inaugural artist-in-residence in the Vu-Chu Digital Art Residency in Hong Kong. If you’re in the city, please come by on Saturday to visit the residency space and hear a bit more about what I’m doing with this opportunity.
Video game art talk in Hong Kong!
Sat Oct 17 - 1-4pm in Chai Wan, HK
Talk by artist @mitchellfchan and @mayeth8848 May Xue with a preview of the Vu-Chu Digital Art Residency. Artist talk at 2pm.
luma.com/1gqbaluc
About Mitchell F. Chan: Mitchell F. Chan is an artist described as “committed to the most serious ideas of conceptualism in the most playful way possible.” He is currently presenting an exhibition of digital and sculptural art games, titled “Workers’ Playtime,” at DE SARTHE. His most recent work includes: The Boys of Summer, an interactive sports management simulation; and Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge, an allegorical croquet video game about Reconstruction-era America, commissioned by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. His pioneering blockchain artwork Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility was recently exhibited at the Fondazione Prada during the Venice Biennale.
About May Xue: May Xue is an international arts leader and former CEO of UCCA. She is the co-founder of Outland, a platform dedicated to digital art, and the founder of Horizon Art Foundation, supporting contemporary artists and cultural initiatives.
About the Vu-Chu Digital Art Residency: Started by @LACMA Digital Leaders co-Chairs Jeannie Vu and Jehan Chu in Q3 2026, the Vu-Chu Digital Art Residency invites artists to come to Hong Kong and explore/deepen their digital practice while experiencing the rich culture and community of Hong Kong. In collaboration with Partners @MnemeFoundation and LACMA’s Digital Leaders.
Opening today in Hong Kong.
Workers’ Playtime is my first solo exhibition in Asia, and an important next step in the work I’ve been building for the past ten years.
Mitchell F Chan retweeted
..it's a scorcher this winter..
Paris Photo 2026 with @summergwagner
Art Basel Miami Beach 2026 with @mitchellfchan
Mitchell F Chan retweeted
the futility in this work gives me such a thick boner.
1 week 'till my solo exhibition opens at @deSarthe Hong Kong!
When I started making these sculptures in the autumn of 2025, I was approaching this work as both a personal challenge for myself, and as a quiet act of rebellion against an arts scene that was becoming stale and monotonous.
1 week 'till my solo exhibition opens at @deSarthe Hong Kong!
When I started making these sculptures in the autumn of 2025, I was approaching this work as both a personal challenge for myself, and as a quiet act of rebellion against an arts scene that was becoming stale and monotonous.
Mitchell F Chan retweeted
Holy shit babe, new MFC announcement dropped.
📣🌟Important announcement:🌟📣
Workers’ Playtime is the title of my solo exhibition running at DE SARTHE in Hong Kong from October 10 to November 21.
I have been working on the pieces for this exhibition non-stop for the past year: a set of sculptures that collage electro-mechanical pinball components, and a suite of video game levels. If you missed me at one of the parties or one of the conferences or something like that over the past 12 months, it’s because I was in my studio having the time of my life making these bizarre, hilarious, clever machines. I will say more about the work in the days to come. I think they’re fresh, I think they're funny; I think they are a little bit heartbreaking. I think you probably haven’t seen anything like them.
I am proud beyond words to be presenting this work at @deSarthe, a gallery that has assembled possibly the most exciting roster of digital artists of any gallery in the international art community today. That they have built this roster on top of their 40-year history of dealing in modern masters speaks to their rigor and commitment to pushing this new frontier in contemporary art.
If you are in Hong Kong next month, please let me know so I can send you an invitation to the reception. If you can’t make it, hopefully I’ll see you soon.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
SOLD! Thank you once again to @0xassembly and @cosmicblend !
This is a very good short video essay and everyone on here who cares about digital or new media or technological art should watch/listen.
I made a film.
Every chapter of technological modernity has searched for an aesthetics adequate to its time.
Time and again, the pursuit of the new and the beautiful has involved looking back to the past.
There has never been progress without nostalgia, or novelty without tradition.
The film tells this story through the history of architecture and design, from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day Silicon Valley.
Mitchell F Chan retweeted
I made a film.
Every chapter of technological modernity has searched for an aesthetics adequate to its time.
Time and again, the pursuit of the new and the beautiful has involved looking back to the past.
There has never been progress without nostalgia, or novelty without tradition.
The film tells this story through the history of architecture and design, from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day Silicon Valley.
BIG MONEH!
This week's sketch: an early draft of the artwork "Roundtrippin,'" from my upcoming exhibition in Hong Kong.
This is the 21st weekly sketch in the series! It's available for sale here: opensea.io/item/ethereum/0x4…
