Hong Kong-based artist, Andrew Luk’s work investigates how civilization is positioned in relationship to nature. His artworks often
employ unconventional materials to consider how human activity and systems of entropy and preservation impact the spaces that surround us, be those natural or manmade. Chronicle Compression explores liminal spaces by making rubbings of overlooked surfaces on sites found within the University of Chicago’s Hong Kong Center. In order to make the work, Luk and his team made aluminum rubbings of different parts of the Center’s Heritage architecture. From the Royal Engineers symbol to the building’s hearth, Luk documents and displays the multiple histories and uses of the site within a single work. Through archiving and documenting this site’s varied histories in visual forms, Luk explored the ways in which time has become inscribed within the site’s materiality and can, in turn, be transferred to the materials of his work.