Fragments Figments

Basel, Switzerland

June to October 2025

Hong Kong-based artist Tobias Klein presents FRAGMENTS FIGMENTS, an exhibition exploring the contemporary relationship between material authenticity and digital abstraction through the notion of Kunstl and schaft.

CLOUD ROCK comprises nine reimagined Gongshi scholar’s rocks (five Taihu, four Yingde). These computationally dissected works extend the traditional Chinese poetic dichotomy between cloud lightness and rock solidity into a contemporary discourse on Gestell and Cosmao-technics. Made from natural rocks held in 3D-scanned and printed steel bases, they explore tensions between form/aura, man-made perfection, and nature’s complexities. The work articulates a mathematical process, creating “sintered”digital reductions that bridge found forms and computation. It speculates how simulating nature resonates as cultural and emotional simulacra through anthropomorphic qualities.

Confronting these is DARK FOREST, a three-panel lenticular triptych. Created from 3D scans of Hong Kong’s wilderness, its imagery fractures into pixelated landscapes via light-refracting lenses. As viewers move,the shifting terrain rejects constructed picturesque traditions to evoke disorientation within digitally constructed nature. Neither documentation nor homage, Dark Forrest serves as an Anthropocene swansong: dense and unyielding, it mourns ecological erosion while celebrating AI-recombinant ecosystems.

FRAGMENTS FIGMENTS invites witnessing where geological memory converges with algorithmic reincarnation—meditating.