Rel Pham: Cache 2023

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Rel Pham: Cache unveils the all seeing eye behind our mundane rituals of logging on and scrolling feeds. Composed of video and installation, Pham brings to light social media and Internet usage in everyday life. This exhibition corrupts the architecture, sacred sculptures and idols of Cao Dai temples with high-end computer parts, creating a parallel universe of online worship. Pham embellishes his digital structures with whirring PC fans and glowing tubes of antifreeze, digitising the symbolic red, blue and yellow of Caodaism in radiating neon hues.

Within this alternate realm exists an unliving entity programmed to trace our every online gesture, mapping our habits and generating digital profiles for the banal purpose of targeted advertising. As bots shadow each keystroke and swipe, Pham visualises the impact of big data bleeding out into the offline world. He asks us to consider the rapid pace at which we exist in an online hall of mirrors and the private information we unknowingly share with the world.

Artist Biography

Rel Pham is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, designer, animator and illustrator known for a strong use of electric, vibrant colours and a penchant for surrealism. Drawing upon old world fables and rituals for thematic inspiration, Pham explores the interconnected nature of our current physical and digital realities through screen-based video, animation and installation. Pham creates hybrid worlds, rendering traditional scenes of Cao Dai temples and Western classical art in an illuminated palette of neon PC coolant fluid and radiant LED lights. He flattens our past, present and future to demystify the invisible numbers that surround everyday life, exposing the programmed spectres haunting our data through cautionary tales of being intrinsically connected online.