dreamedcore, the second exhibition at GOLD by Serakai Studio, presents a multi-sensorial exploration of digital-age nostalgia, bringing together artists, designers, fashion labels, and creative studios from across Asia. Taking on the format of an art exhibition, concept store, and runway show, dreamedcore looks at how a new generation is re-imagining visual culture — conditioned by increasingly fluid channels of production and distribution—and constructing dreamy worlds from internet nostalgia and hazy atmospheric tones. Curated by Shirley Lau, Associate Curator, Serakai Studio and Tobias Berge, Co-Founder and Curatorial Director, Serakai Studio, the exhibition opens on Saturday, June 6, in Wong Chuk Hang and will be on view through Saturday August 1.
dreamedcore begins with a feeling: late-night strolling through empty streets, vacant malls, and softly lit corridors that seem both distant and strangely familiar. The exhibition proposes treating the algorithmic aesthetic of “dreamcore” — which draws heavily on visual textures from the 1990s and early 2000s — not simply as style or subculture but as a generational condition. For artists, designers, and creative practitioners born in the 1990s, growing up amid tremendous urban change and now hitting their 30s, such imagery returns as hazy afterimages of an uncanny world, shaped as much by platform circulation and algorithmic repetition as by lived memory itself.
dreamedcore is therefore less about direct recollection than a collectively reconstructed atmosphere, assembled through memory, platforms, and circulating images. Featuring twenty-two emerging multi-disciplinary artists and creative practitioners from Asia, the exhibition maps out how we remember, adapt, and resist within an age of endless imagery and accelerating information. Between digital archaeology and future fantasy, the exhibition traces the emotional pulse of a generation shaped by overload and longing.
Copy Queen, 2024. Photo: Weishan Hu. Courtesy of HuDieGongZhu.
The exhibition unfolds in two parts. “Chapter 1: The Lure” draws visitors into the soft familiarity of dreamcore aesthetics, with fluid lamps, surreal furniture, and works by artists such as Li Shuang evoking hazy internet-era memories. “Chapter 2: The Twist” shifts toward the uncanny, diving into nostalgia, kitsch, and subtle unease through works by random clichés and glass and screen sculptures by Peng Ke, revealing a past that feels personal yet which has never truly existed. Set around a central runway stage, the exhibition is immersed in ambient lighting, surrounded by art and design objects as well as mannequins. A mini cinema, featuring a chandelier by File Studio and sofas designed by kar, screens a video work by artist Wong Ping, inviting visitors to slow down and linger — an essential part of the dreamedcore experience.
Assembling artists, fashion brands, and design studios, dreamedcore is the culmination of deep research by Serakai Studio into emerging artistic and design practices in China and across Asia. These include Li Shuang, Liu Yin, Wong Ping, Liu Shuwei, Chen Wei, Ming Wong, Jiū Society, Peng Ke, together with Penultimate, HuDieGongZhu, YAT PIT, VANN, IWANNABANGKOK©, fabric qorn, bias, envy envy, studiososlow, Atelier V&F, random clichés, kar, File Studio, and Nidea·Nlight.
This generation — now mostly in their 30s and early 40s — share their formative years during Asia’s economic boom in the late-90s and early-2000s, a period marked by rapid urbanisation and new technological infrastructures. Whether from Mainland China or elsewhere, many of the works are influenced by the early-to-mid phases of the internet age, with its particular codes and styles, from vaporwave aesthetics to glitch, from a post-punk visual language to a gloomy, dreamlike atmosphere, among others. For some of them, their practice began during the pandemic, a moment of constraint that also offered new possibilities and a shift towards direct-to-consumer operations (WeChat, Xiaohongshu). These same digital ecosystems have equally enabled niche aesthetic worlds to circulate through images, mood, and atmosphere, allowing artists, designers, and fashion labels to build emotionally specific visual languages outside traditional cultural structures. For many, this is their first presentation in Hong Kong.
For co-curator Shirley Lau, the exhibition is deeply personal. “I see ‘dreamcore’ not only as an aesthetic but as a way of holding together nostalgia and present disconnection,” she explains. “The twenty-two artists and creatives in this exhibition are mostly from the same generation as myself. We grew up in similar environments while witnessing constant transformation driven by urbanization and technology. Fundamentally, the exhibition asks: when memory turns to data, when art becomes an experience to be consumed, and when virtual and real entwine — how do we redefine culture, self, and belonging?”
“We were fascinated by a new generation of artists and creative practitioners working in fundamentally different innovative ways,” said Tobias Berger, co-curator of the exhibition and curatorial director of Serakai Studio. “Apart from their extraordinary creativity, new production and distribution systems now allow artists and designers to work at smaller scales, move more quickly, and connect directly with audiences through digital platforms, creating a much more fluid relationship between art, design, fashion, and cultural production at large.”
Ultimately, dreamedcore reflects a broader shift in how culture is produced, circulated, and experienced today. Bringing internet-native aesthetics, independent creative practices, and cross-disciplinary collaboration into a shared curatorial space, the exhibition deliberately collapses distinctions between exhibition, retail environment, social experience, allowing garments, objects, artworks, and design pieces to circulate within the same landscape — visually, emotionally, and operationally. In doing so, dreamedcore positions GOLD not only as a space for visual art, but as a contemporary Salon for emerging forms of visual culture, testing out new relationships between art, community, commerce, and visual culture across Asia.
Exhibition: dreamedcore
Exhibition Dates: Saturday 6 June – Saturday 1 August 2026
Opening Hours: 12PM – 6PM (Wednesday to Saturday)
Location: GOLD, G/F Remex Centre, 42 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong
Talk | June 6, 2026 | 4-5PM
Title: ‘Dreamed Worlds, Lived Cities: Art, Fashion and Objects in a dreamcore Era’
Speakers: Artist Peng Ke, Bu Jiaxin, Founder, envy envy and Lai Onying, Co-founder of YAT PIT
Moderators: Curators Shirley Lau and Tobias Berger
Language: English
Overview: Curators Shirley Lau and Tobias Berger will join three interdisciplinary speakers to explore how, within their respective practices, “dreamcore” becomes a way of processing rapid change, memory, and loss—rather than mere nostalgia. They will also discuss whether the meaning of their work shifts as it circulates through galleries, concept stores, and homes. In this era of hybrid forms and reconstructed nostalgia, how does our generation navigate the emotional pulse between memories of prosperity and the uncertainties of the present?
Fashion Show & Performance
Friday 19 June | 8 – 8.30 pm
Details to be confirmed, please stay tuned for more information
Studio Sessions
Saturday 27 June | 4-8pm
Join us at GOLD for music, drinks and games that transport you to the 2000s
Studio Sessions
Saturday 25 July | 4-8pm
Join us at GOLD for music, drinks and games that transport you to the 2000s
