Artist. I do one project per year. WORKERS' PLAYTIME currently on exhibit at DE SARTHE, Hong Kong.
Toronto
Joined January 2010
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📣🌟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.
Nice little essay on mementos from Marfa over at @outland_art have me wishing (once again) that I'd been at @artblocks_io weekend!
outlandart.substack.com/p/co…
I am so grateful and relieved as the reviews for my new show keep rolling through the Hong Kong press.
TBH: Premiering this body of work in Asia, outside of my established collector network, felt like a big risk, and it upset some of my crypto-native collectors. I totally understand and accept that. But I believe it matters for the long-term health of this whole community that we go out and find new audiences, instead of depending on the same handful of wallets and accounts to hold up our practices.
Every sale to a brand-new collector, and every review like this one, tells me it was the right call. I am trying to build something bigger and more sustainable over the long term.
news.mingpao.com/pns/副刊/article/20261106/s00005/1793894442243/開眼-friday去行展-黃竹坑3展牽動安柔潔思緒-感知線條力道匠意-想像身體生命可能【短片】
A few months ago I gave a talk at @newmuseum about interactive, game-based and “worldbuilding” artworks, and why curators and critics struggle to assess them. It’s now an essay on @rhizome that maps out ways to read this stuff.
This new @GrantYun2 drop with @fellowshiptrust is exemplary of one of the types of art I defined in that talk. If you’re looking forward to this artwork, the essay might help shape your appreciation.
rhizome.org/editorial/2026/o…
tick tock, tick tock... My year so far:
January - September 2026: Shut up and do great work.
October 5: Move into penthouse studio overlooking Kowloon Bay as inaugural Vu-Chu Digital Art Resident.
October 11: Open solo exhibition of brand new works at @deSarthe in Hong Kong.
October 14: Publish lecture on @rhizome about current state of game art.
October 22: Enter permanent collection at @LACMA.
October 30: Finish 3200 word art review / essay for HOLO Magazine.
November 4: Exhibit at Tokyo Jazz Club with @nguyenwahed
November ??: Fundraiser exhibition for @outland_art
December 2: Second exhibition of brand new work at @artbasel Miami.
December 6: Disappear for another year at least. Bye!
Proud to be a part of this exhibition to support the art criticism which is so vital to this space
So delighted to be a part of Tokyo Jazz Club with @nguyenwahed !
TOKYO JAZZ CLUB
When the fair announced it will be hosted in a former capsule hotel I thought right away about these works
SUN by @qubibien that makes us look up through our phones to see the sun - on view through hundreds of qr codes spread out across all floors in the building
Imagraph by @goki_muramoto with a special edition installed inside a sleeping pod - is there any better place for this?!
On the gaming floor @mitchellfchan’s Ladyboss game about a video gaming female streamer is playable right next to games of JODI or Gabriel Massan
On the vinyl dedicated floor @kimasendorf’s DEMO A-F vinyl from node. Played on Japanese turntables next to Japanese whiskey
The fair is on view until Sunday with Goki’s and Qubibi’s live performances happening this week - its going to be magical✨
I'm certified!! Again!!
Honored for my work to be a part of @LACMA, part of a major donation to the museum by their Digital Leaders group, The Mneme Foundation, and other generous art patrons.
These patron groups have had a really big impact in folding digital art into a mainstream art historical conversation, a conversation is something that I've been passionate about since I started messing around with this tech all those years ago.
Extra special thanks to @jeannievu and @collectionist for continuing to lead this field with their work, vision, and generosity.
www-images.lacma.org/s3fs-pu…
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…
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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.
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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.
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.