The Next Level / Mark Chung’s exhibitions often feature opposites and duality. Objects are intentionally broken or deconstructed alongside ones that are carefully built. Claustrophobic installations are created in which settings, artwork and videos offer freedom and space, depicting or alluding to grids-as-cages set against free-floating-clouds. There are intense, blinding light and spots of darkness; technical skill and analogue craft-worship. Objects used for one purpose are skilfully reobjectified. At times, there are moments of anger and then great empathy, often sudden.  Everything in Mark’s exhibitions is considered and holistic, his efforts often a balance of raw individuality and boyish camaraderie with friends who have assisted. There is considerable thought and a striving-for-better anxiety: to remain genuine and true, and not to be a slacker. That motivation is familial, a matter of working as his paternal Hong Kong Chinese and maternal Austrian families would expect: striving for the next level. For a time, after his Wheezing exhibition in September 2020, and before he began studying in Amsterdam in late 2022, we would meet for lunch or …