Jackie Lam (aka 009) Returns to JPS Gallery Hong Kong with “Encounter,” a Meditation on Quiet Connection

JPS Gallery Hong Kong presents “Encounter,” a solo exhibition by Jackie Lam—widely known as 009—that reorients the white cube around slow looking and narrative suggestion. The show assembles the artist’s signature “cosmic travellers,” anonymous figures that drift through spare, luminous environments and function as stand-ins for viewers navigating their own inner terrain. Rather than prescribing interpretation, the works invite projection and recognition, framing attention itself as a form of care in an over-mediated culture.

The installation is conceived as a calm threshold between the terrestrial and the celestial. Maritime atmospheres—central to the artist’s sensibility—inform a palette and staging that feel reflective rather than escapist: a “luminous harbour” where travellers and onlookers share the same, unhurried horizon line. Within this architecture of quiet, vulnerability is recast as a communicative tool, opening a space in which being seen—by an artwork or by another person—can be restorative.

Lam’s visual language fuses references to Japanese manga and European modernist movements with crisp contours and saturated, even-tempered color. The alias “009” acknowledges Cyborg 009 by Shōtarō Ishinomori, but the citation functions less as homage than as an index of method: a narrative impulse distilled into archetypes, then refined through the discipline of design. The result is a character-driven vocabulary—economical, emotive, and legible at a glance—that sustains depth without resorting to sentimentality.

Born in Hong Kong in 1979, Lam studied at the First Institute of Art and Design before working as a toy designer and theme-park architect—apprenticeships that sharpened his command of scale, silhouette, and viewer choreography. He later established himself as an illustrator and cartoonist and published Drawin9 Life in 2009. Parallel forays into art toys, including the astronaut figure “Unio,” have enjoyed broad popularity across Asia and inform the sculptural presence and narrative clarity of the works on view.

“Encounter” ultimately advances a clear proposition: when pictorial protagonists are deliberately anonymous, audiences supply the specificity. Lam leverages that anonymity to produce scenes that read as universal without becoming generic, placing modest gestures—posture, gaze, proximity—at the center of the encounter. In doing so, the exhibition argues for the civic utility of quiet: a reminder that connection thrives where attention is protected.

Exhibition details: JPS Gallery (Hong Kong), G/F, 88–90 Staunton Street, Central, Hong Kong. Opening reception: Thursday, September 11, 2025, 5–8 pm. Exhibition period: September 12–October 11, 2025 (gallery closed September 17–22).

Jackie Lam a.k.a. 009