Oscar Chan Yik Long: To Sleep and Wake Unafraid

Curated by Angelika Li. Viewing until June 22 by appointment only: connect@PF25.org.

PF25 cultural projects is delighted to present To Sleep and Wake Unafraid, Oscar Chan Yik-long’s first solo presentation in Switzerland and the opening chapter of his two-part solo exhibition series, unfolding across Basel and Vilnius in 2025.

Part of PF25’s Spring Program and the Art Basel VIP Program, this site-specific presentation is staged in a sixteenth-century building in the heart of Basel’s Old Town.

Known for his standalone ink paintings and large-scale ephemeral murals, Chan’s practice weaves together East Asian philosophy, mythology, and spiritual traditions with Western classical and symbolist influences. Horror cinema and global pop culture further infuse his visual language, bridging ancestral memory with contemporary experience.

Titled after a line from Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film Hour of the Wolf, the exhibition reflects on the liminal hours before dawn—moments that stir deep emotional currents in both the conscious and unconscious. For Chan, these early hours resonate with those navigating complexity and difference in their lived realities, while also evoking a universal longing—and right—for safe spaces of self-understanding, healing, and growth.

A new cycle of paintings and installation, bearing the same title as the exhibition, introduces phantasmagorical figures drawn from Chan’s own mythology. At its center stands The Fight between Dream and Nightmare (2025), where two protagonists battle amidst a constellation of mythological beings, hybrid creatures, and wandering souls traversing cultures and time. These elements unfold on canvases and in a textile installation that unfurls across the ceiling. This overhead piece evokes cosmological tension, drawing the gaze upward into a shifting constellation of motion and metamorphosis.

Also shown for the first time in Switzerland is A Horror to the Eyes of All Men Seeking Faith (2023), its title adapted from a line in the script of the 1990 film The Exorcist III. Presented as a prelude to the new works, this earlier cycle revolves around decadence and distortion, embodied by fallen angels. Chan links this degeneration to human greed and desire, often expressed through consumption, destruction, and disconnection from nature—driven by fear.

Referencing the film’s ending, where evil is expelled by faith and will, Chan questions how faith can descend into horror when clouded by noise and illusion. The existential question “Who am I?” becomes a compass against disorientation. Within this polarity of light and darkness, Chan invites reflection on faith, fear, and transformation—core to the exhibition’s topics of vulnerability, ritual, and renewal.

The exhibition continues with its second chapter, They Always Look from the Imagined Above, on view from November 27, 2025 to March 15, 2026 at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art in Vilnius, a branch of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. This marks Chan’s first museum solo, curated by Anders Kreuger, Director of Kunsthalle Kohta, Helsinki.

The Vilnius exhibition will feature new and existing paintings, rendered on canvas, paper, and custom-made furniture-like objects. A site-specific painting installation will also respond to the high vaulted ceiling of one of the museum’s exhibition spaces. The new body of work continues Chan’s exploration of East Asian belief systems, particularly in relation to how they intersect with Western spiritual practices and methods of divination.

This exhibition series, which will be accompanied by the artist’s first monograph, is a collaboration between Kunsthalle Kohta (Helsinki), PF25 cultural projects (Basel), and the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (Vilnius). The Basel chapter is supported by sinokultur, Zurich, with the production of new works made possible by a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR).