At ASIA NOW 2026, Gallery BYGRIDA presents FACES, exploring portraiture through landscape, virtual figures and collective life.
FACES
19–24 October 2026
Monnaie de Paris · 11 Quai de Conti, Paris, France
Reuben Wu | Shavonne Wong | Niceaunties | ALIENQUEEN | Mr. Misang | POLYGON1993 | Hemyeong
Portraiture beyond the human face.
Gallery BYGRIDA will present FACES at ASIA NOW 2026 at the Monnaie de Paris from 19 to 24 October, with a VIP preview on 19 October and public access from 20 to 24 October.
The group exhibition brings together seven artists to explore portraiture beyond the human face and ask how identity becomes visible through images today. A place can reveal something about a person; a community can become a collective portrait; an imagined self can acquire its own visual identity. Across illuminated landscapes, virtual figures, surreal bodies, crowded cities, glitch imagery and cosmic visions, FACES brings these possibilities into dialogue through photography, 3D image-making, AI, digital illustration, analog video experimentation and Korean ink painting translated into digital media.
REUBEN WU
Homage to Homage to the Square
The artists approach this expanded portrait through different kinds of presence.
Reuben Wu uses light as a sculptural element to transform remote natural landscapes into unfamiliar environments that appear almost planetary.
The landscape is not simply a background but becomes a presence reshaped by human perception and technology. Shavonne Wong creates hyperreal 3D figures to explore beauty, identity and emotional presence.
Her digitally constructed characters appear human but have no physical past, questioning the boundary between human identity and virtual existence. In Niceaunties’ AI-generated Auntieverse, the familiar figure of the auntie becomes a way to explore ageing, care, family, community and cultural memory. Humour and tenderness shape her digital imagery.
ALIENQUEEN draws on her family’s refugee history and her personal experiences to address anxiety, survival and connection. Surreal bodies that mutate, distort and transform give visual form to identity shaped by uncertainty and change.
Mr. Misang’s dense megacities and repetitive routines introduce a collective portrait of contemporary society. Within his crowded compositions, individuality can gradually disappear into urban systems and shared patterns of daily life.
ALIENQUEEN
Wake up or log on
Shavonne Wong
Field
Niceaunties
Auntie Amelia
Polygon1993
KoiNoYokan 13
Hemyeong
Constellation Links
POLYGON1993 creates glitch imagery with modified analog video equipment, embracing technological errors, noise and imperfection. His work combines nostalgia, Japanese popular culture and the visual language of older technologies.
Hemyeong has spent more than four decades painting cosmic and celestial imagery in ink on Korean hanji paper. By extending this practice into the digital realm, the artist connects traditional materials and techniques with a contemporary imagination of the universe. Here, technology, nature and the cosmos become possible forms of portraiture, while established artistic practices coexist with contemporary ways of making images.
Together, these practices move between landscape, digitally constructed characters, transforming bodies and crowds, extending the exhibition’s question of how a portrait can represent both a person and a community.
Mr. Misang, Swamp-p02
Gallery BYGRIDA was founded by curator Grida (Jang Hyewon). Working across the boundaries of physical and digital art, the gallery supports the international visibility of artists who work with digital media.
At ASIA NOW 2026, its group exhibition FACES brings seven artists into a shared exploration of contemporary portraiture. The exhibition’s curatorial framework approaches digital art through human and social experience, with identity, ageing, care, collective life, technology, nature and memory among its themes. AI is considered a medium for expressing cultural memory, generations and social narratives.
Alongside this, FACES examines how traditional artistic practices can coexist with and evolve through contemporary image-making. The gallery’s Paris presentation brings these questions into an exhibition spanning photography, 3D, AI and Korean ink painting translated into digital media.
ASIA NOW is Paris’ Asian art fair, presenting contemporary art from Asia and its diaspora. Its twelfth edition will take place at the Monnaie de Paris from 20 to 24 October 2026, with an invitation-only VIP preview on 19 October. Hosted in the venue’s galleries and courtyards, the fair will bring together more than 200 artists, presented by around 60 galleries, institutions and private foundations. The 2026 curatorial approach, titled Sentimental Value, considers how value develops through memory, attachment and the relationships between objects and the lives around them. The edition presents Asia as a platform for exchange, with heritage, experimentation and international dialogue informing its approach to contemporary art.
