From 5 July–2 August 2025, WKM Gallery is delighted to present Return to Nothing, Freddy Carrasco’s inaugural exhibition in Hong Kong. A Canadian artist of Dominican heritage, Carrasco has cultivated a diverse multidisciplinary practice over the past decade spanning painting, sculpture, animation, illustration, music, and spatial design. This exhibition, developed in Hong Kong over 4 months during his residency at SIDE SPACE, unveils a new body of work that marks a new chapter in the artist’s personal narrative. Having spent the past 6 years in Tokyo, Carrasco’s time in Hong Kong has served as an extension of a physical and spiritual journey into rediscovering what connects humanity across cities, cultures, religions, and eras. Spurred by the existential tension that such overwhelming (and often brutally indifferent) megalopolises bring about, the exhibition returns back to the home: through deeply vulnerable works reflecting on family and intimate relationships, Carrasco finds an entry point towards the universal human desire for connection, meaning, and transcendence.

Before arriving in Hong Kong, Carrasco had already started to confront the ways his surroundings shaped his sense of self. After a period of travelling across multiple big cities and residing in Tokyo, Carrasco came to view the cluttered, gadget-ridden cyberpunk aesthetic he had once idealised as a symptom of consumerism. A place where performativity eclipsed authenticity, the city had become an antithesis to spiritual survival rather than a vision of an emancipatory future. Abandoning the mirage of techno-futurism, Carrasco sought a new north star, stripping himself of all pretensions and returning to the rawness of the physical world. It is this return to materiality that lies at the heart of Return to Nothing.

Unfolding across the gallery’s interconnected rooms, the exhibition charts a path from inner turmoil to transcendence, shaped by the artist’s time in Hong Kong. Greeted with a visual palette of blacks, reds, and cage-like grids, the viewer is initially met with an oppressive atmosphere that is almost claustrophobic. There is a sense of continuation from his previous exhibition, a show anchored by the haunting black monolith “The Father” (2024). The canvases, mostly airbrushed, look as if they are floating within a thick fog.