Lobster Land  / Whitestone Gallery / Hong Kong / May 23 – Jun 28, 2019 / Remo Notarianni / Multidisciplinary Scottish artist Philip Colbert has made the lobster his alter ego. “I became an artist when I became a lobster,” says the artist, who describes his work as “hyperpop realism”. Colbert’s quirky crustacean was a central figure of Lobster Land, a collection of his large-scale paintings and sculptures at Hong Kong’s Whitestone Gallery, and his first solo exhibition in the city. His images immerse the audience in a landscape of social media aesthetics, including thumb and heart emojis, that are interspersed with art-historical figures. Through his persona, Colbert analyses the visual vocabulary we have acquired by using social-media products that most people depend on daily. In the 2018 triptych Dream Hunt, which was presented at the exhibition, the lobster is seen trying to ride through a congested digital landscape, vaguely reminiscent of Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801). In Hunt Portrait I (Study) (2019), he sits holding a spear in his claw, on a horse that …