Opening Preview: Wednesday, July 9 | 6 - 8 pm
On View: July 10 – August 30, 2025
July 2, 2025 (Berlin, Germany) – SOCIÉTÉ is pleased to announce DOKU the Creator – BHAVACHAKRA, Lu Yang’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Since 2018, Lu Yang has been developing the shapeshifting avatar DOKU in collaboration with a team of scientists, 3D animators, and digital technicians using the latest in motion capture technology. DOKU is a digital shell, a virtual human named after the phrase “Dokusho Dokushi,” meaning “We are born alone, and we die alone.” Yang describes DOKU as a virtual avatar that traverses simulated realities, embodying the dissolution of fixed identity and the recursive nature of consciousness.
In DOKU the Creator – BHAVACHAKRA, Lu Yang creates an otherworldly realm where digital identity, karmic recursion, creative generation, and simulated consciousness converge. Combining post-apocalyptic imagery with the vivid aesthetics of video games, manga, anime, and Buddhist spirituality, the exhibition draws connections between incarnations across virtual, corporeal, and spiritual realms—suggesting a future in which the self and its representations may be endlessly remade. The exhibition’s title work, an immersive video, begins with an extended rumination on dreams and reality before spiraling into metaphysical reflections on cycles of life and death, the illusory nature of existence, and the artistic process itself. Panning through interior and exterior tableaux in which technological detritus, organic matter, elements of the built environment, and parts of the body fuse into elaborate geological or architectural forms, DOKU the Creator gestures toward a digital sublime. In this new work, DOKU is no longer merely a virtual avatar, a digital self, or a performative body. Here, DOKU becomes the Creator—a meditative presence dwelling in the void of the virtual world, conjuring all phenomena through contemplative stillness. Yet what is created is not a “world” in the material sense, but a realm of illusions—a perpetual cycle governed by ignorance and attachment.
The metaphysical shift that DOKU undergoes—from a fabricated virtual entity to a creator in its own right—is echoed throughout the exhibition, suggesting that the boundaries between human, machine, and consciousness are increasingly fluid and interwoven. Twenty-four digital paintings extend beyond DOKU’s virtual world and into the realm of Buddhist cosmology. They comprise artworks created by DOKU within the narrative logic of the video work, as part of a virtual meditation practice. Each painting corresponds to a specific moment and cosmological element in DOKU the Creator – BHAVACHAKRA—such as the Twelve Nidanas, the Six Realms, the Three Poisons, and the Karmic Paths. These works are manifestations of DOKU’s internal vision, generated through contemplative stillness and rendered into symbolic visual form. With their strong material presence and symbolic references to playing cards, the paintings become the third iteration in a chain of creation—beginning with Yang and stretching beyond the human. DOKU themself becomes the creator, generating their own visual cosmology in the virtual world.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
DOKU the Creator – BHAVACHAKRA by Lu Yang will be on view from July 10 – August 30, 2025.
Address
Wielandstraße 26
10707 Berlin
Opening Preview
Wednesday, July 9 | 6 - 8 pm
Opening Hours
Monday – Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm
Closed on Sundays
About Lu Yang:
Lu Yang (b. 1984, Shanghai) lives and works between Shanghai and Tokyo. His recent video installation DOKU The Flow premiered at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris as part of the museum’s Open Space series and was recently on view at K11 Shenzhen. In 2022, Lu Yang was named Artist of the Year by Deutsche Bank. His work was featured in WORLDBUILDING, an exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Julia Stoschek Foundation in Düsseldorf, which later traveled to the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Lu Yang has held solo exhibitions at major international institutions including Kunsthalle Basel; Palais Populaire, Berlin; ARoS Museum, Aarhus; M Woods, Beijing; MOCA Cleveland; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Kunstpalais Erlangen. His work has also been presented in significant group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Times Square Arts, New York; CCA Tel Aviv; ICA, London; Muzeum Sztuki, Poland; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Fridericianum, Kassel, among others.
Lu Yang is part of a number of public collections including ARoS, Aarhus; Asia Art Archives, New York; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Kunstpalais Erlangen; M+ Collection, Hong Kong; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Taguchi Art Collection, Japan; UBS Art Collection; Ullens Foundation, Switzerland; among others.
About SOCIÉTÉ:
SOCIÉTÉ is a Berlin-based contemporary art gallery with a global reach. The gallery’s bold curatorial approach plays a pivotal role in advancing its artists’ visions, supporting major museum exhibitions, biennials, and acquisitions by leading institutional collections worldwide. Operating in both the primary and secondary markets, SOCIÉTÉ provides curated advisory services to select clients.
Beyond its exhibitions, the gallery’s publishing initiative, EDITION SOCIÉTÉ, collaborates with prominent writers and graphic designers to produce artist books, catalogues, and, more recently, high-end artist editions.
SOCIÉTÉ is an active presence at major international art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze New York, Frieze London, ARCOmadrid, and Gallery Weekend Berlin.
Image Credits:
Video still, Lu Yang, DOKU The Creator, 2025 Courtesy the artist and SOCIÉTÉ, Berlin.