Serial Surrogates (Absolutely USB)
Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, London
Oct 10 - Dec 13 2025
Curated by Vittoria de Franchis.
8 Chelsea Embankment
SW3 4LE, London, United Kingdom.

Serial Surrogates (Absolutely USB) is Ivan Cheng’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, presented in the Library at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation and curated by Vittoria de Franchis. The show inaugurates a new series of commissions for the Library, inviting artists whose practices address and challenge modes of archiving and categorisation. For more than a decade, Ivan Cheng (b. 1991, Sydney) has developed a practice as intermedia as it is interpersonal. Spanning performance, writing, video, sound, and installation, his work is shaped by collaboration, letting transactions, and encounters inform both method and material. An excessive and almost comic performativity permeates his presentations, whether live or installative, creating space for roles and expectations to be enacted (and eventually questioned), whether by the spectator, an intervention, or the site itself.

Stemming from Cheng’s ever-present consideration of the suggestions and constraints of the context, Serial Surrogates (Absolutely USB) engages with the physical and conceptual framework of Library to delve in the ways attention and the flow of information are translated, at what pace. The exhibition extends Cheng’s proposal of the USB as both metaphor and device (with a nod to the functional charm of acronyms), drawing a parallel between the Universal Serial Bus—a device for condensing
and transporting data—and the bus as a high-occupancy vehicle moving and compressing bodies, reflecting the flow of cultural and entertainment content.
The Library’s architecture is extended via a cardboard replica, its theatricality and willfully temporary nature echoing motifs present across Cheng’s work. Shelves vanish to make room for new paintings realised during his residency at the Mondrian Initiative in Laren. Hinting at views from bus windows, the works avoid declaring their subjects outright, allowing images to operate as carriers of content, mood, and memory. These reflect Cheng’s ongoing concern with “the privilege and ability
of abstracting and simplifying form,” while working in the studio of Piet Mondrian, asking how “erasure, reduction, and simplification might still shape the way we see”.

Cheng’s emblematic “live situations for camera” unfold in Hard Drive 1 across a battery of flatscreens in different sizes, their rhythm punctuated by a countdown at the edge “as though anticipating perpetual arrival. The piece proposes a route through documentation from nine performances and premieres his most recent work Autobiography, filmed in September at his residency studio and the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht. Through headphones, spectators can hear the sound of the films, sometimes one, sometimes multiple simultaneously, creating a layered, radio-like effect.

A model of a bus, first realised for the performance-exhibition NP at MUMA in Melbourne in 2024 by Cheng, inspired on Jean Prouvé’s pre-fabrication proposals and modernist experiments, functions as part toy, part teatrino, part architectural fragment. On the ceiling, a convex traffic mirror reflects the entire room, summarising the exhibition’s images much like an AI might condense and reinterpret data. Typically employed for security, the mirror evokes the gaze of a camera, suggesting how content and people are indexed, and made legible within systems of circulation and compression.

Photos: Eva Herzog

Autobiography (2025)
Video

Choreography, performance: Sophia Dinkel, Meg Harper, Ivan Cheng
Direction, music, edit: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Sculptures: Alexander Iezzi
Camera: Arvo Leo

Commissioned by The Mondrian Initiative. The Rietveld-Schröder-Huis is part of the Centraal Museum Utrecht Collection © Pictoright © Schröder estates

Special thanks: Amy Stenvert, Maarten Rutgers, Alexandra van Doorne, Rob Franken, ⁠Lara van Acker - de Jonge, Mariëtte Heyning, Barbara Houwers, The Dooyewaard Foundation, Centraal Museum Utrecht, ⁠Natalie Dubois, Pascale Pere, Carla Verhagen, ⁠Carola Schütz, ⁠Jason Dolman/Victor Crepsley

Hard Drive 1 (2025)
Video installation, dimensions variable

Kerosene Knock on Radio Slinky (2022)
Voiture14, Marseille
Performers: Ivan Cheng, Myriam Mokdes
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Alexis Liger

Reception (2022)
MAXXI, Rome
Performer: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Francesco S. Russomanno, Gianfranco Fortuna, Emanuela Fortuna
Curators: Centrale Fies, Anne Palopoli

Roman Candles (2022)
Performance, text, edit: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Documentation camera: Margaux Vendassi & Camille D. Tonnerre

Ambientals (2023)
Performance, text, edit: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Alexander Iezzi
Curators: Raoul Klooker, Stefan Kalmar
French translation: Juliette Mello
Produced by OCT0

The Divine Comedy (2023)
Zweigstelle Capitain, C.A.S.A - Palazzo Degas - Napoli
Performance, text, music, edit: Ivan Cheng
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Arvo Leo
Bassoon: Nuno Mourao

Clarities (2023)
Echelle Humaine, Lafayette Anticipations/Festival d’Automne, Paris
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Arvo Leo
Performance, text, edit: Ivan Cheng
Curators: Madeleine Planeix Crocker, Amélie Coster

Feudal Flaw (2023)
Come Together, Frascati 1, Amsterdam
Garments: Gerritsen’s
Camera: Arvo Leo

Oil Rig Elision (tempesta d’amore) (2024)
Performers: Ivan Cheng, Patrizia Inzaghi, Giacomo Masini, No Text Azienda
Curator: Niccolò Gravina
Camera: No Text Azienda (Lorenzo Gentilini, Alvin Mojetta, Domenico Nicoletti, Michele Zanotti)
Sound: A Teardrop Sound (Edoardo Rossano)
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Producer: Camilla Pagliano
Translation: Giulia Lenti
Conceived for Against Sun and Dust, Villa Imperiale, Pesaro, Aug 10, 2023
Produced by INCURVA
Courtesy the Artist and Edouard Montassut, Paris

Red Herring (Piet’s Escape Room) (2025)
Huis Bosschaert, Laren
Performers: Ivan Cheng, Sophia Dinkel, Max Grund, Arvo Leo
Garments: Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Camera: Max Grund, Arvo Leo
Commissioned by The Mondrian Initiative.

Special thanks: Elena Brugnano, Valeria Giampietro, Dr Regina Fiorito, Gisela Capitain, Artun Alaska Arasli, Myriam Mokdes, Alexandra Marin Rey, Sirine Mokdes, Elsa Kostic, Alexis Liger, Raoul Klooker, Charles Garcin, Bryce Gallo, Rhea Dillon, Carrosserie des Héros, Édouard Montassut, Patrick Jullien, Silvia Rosi, Annette Lehmann, Giulia Pedace, Cornelia Mattiacci / Il Teatro degli Artisti; Alessandra Castelbarco Albani, Marco Di Nallo / Villa Imperiale, Marie de Gaulejac, Adélie de Soumagnat, Camille Ramanana Rahary, Florence Gosset, Maurane Amel Arbouz, Sandar Tun Tun, Triangle – Astérides, centre d'art contemporain

USB (Cast aluminium model) (2024)
Aluminium, brass, wood, mixed media
Fabrication: Pablo Rezzonico Bongcam

Windows 1-12 (2025)
Canvas, lining fabric, gesso, ink, acrylic, flashe, coloured pencil, copic markers, graphite