Work, Luck, Play (2024-2026)

Work, Luck, Play was a three-part exhibition at Art Basel Hong Kong (Booth Z09, March 25–29, 2026) presented by Silk. Work is four silver hands. Luck is six fixed dice. Play is the trading game they produce. Luckiest archives every roll made at the fair. The Art of Conversation, with Starbucks, takes the trade beyond the booth. Onchain as an Opepen Set.

Work is effort. Luck is chance. Play is both.

Work The migration of labor made physical.
Abstraction cast in solid silver.

Luck The engineering of chance made visible.
Six objects that look like dice but are not.

Play Both ideas experienced rather than observed.

Together, Work, Luck, and Play articulate a single idea.

The most valuable commodity is not the favorable outcome. It is the design of the game itself.

Work. When labor becomes invisible, what do we value?

2024 / Sterling Silver / Asprey Studio, London.

Four hands cast in silver, from a classical human hand to the pixel cursor of an early Macintosh. Work migrates from body to screen. Effort disappears. The consequences grow.

Cast at Asprey Studio. The first hand carries two newly registered hallmarks from the UK Assay Office: a centuries-old guarantee that a human verified the object.

A sculpture about the disappearance of work, made through visible human work.

The paradox is the point. As intelligence approaches zero marginal cost, the things that resist replication appreciate: scarce materials, verified craftsmanship, proof that a human took the time.

Luck. What happens when you remove chance from the outcome?

2025 / Sterling Silver / Asprey Studio, London.

Six dice. Every face shows the same number. Roll the one and you get one. Roll the six and you get six. Every time. Forever.

These are not dice. They are certainty engines disguised as probability tools.

Chance is how humans navigate the world. We default to habit. We pick the brand we recognize. Entire industries are built on this. Brand value is a tax on cognitive laziness. Interchange fees are a tax on payment friction. Insurance renewals are a tax on inertia. None survive perfect optimization.

Dice that show only sixes are not lucky. They are inevitable. That is what optimization does: it removes the variance. Variance is where the value was hiding.

The sculpture does not argue good or bad. It makes it physical. The form is preserved. The function is removed.

Luckiest. Every roll at the booth is produced twice: once for the participant, once for the archive. The second copy goes into a transparent container beside a complete silver set.

2026 / Resin, Glass, Sterling Silver / Art Basel Hong Kong.

Over three days the container fills. By the close, the 1/1 holds a complete record of lived probability, authored by the crowd.

The silver set holds all possible outcomes. The 1/1 holds what actually occurred. The fair's own memory, cast in resin and glass.

Luckiest comes with its own silver set and the original dice table made for the fair.

Play. What is the value of a reason to connect?

2026 / Transparent Resin / Art Basel Hong Kong.

Work and Luck converge: six dice cast in transparent resin, fixed like the silver set. The objects are certain. The combination is not.

Roll Roll regular dice at the booth.
Your result determines which six resin dice you receive.
Duplicates, gaps, and all.

Trade Find other participants across the fair.
Trade dice to improve your set.
Everyone needs what they do not have.

Complete Assemble a perfect 1 through 6 sequence.
Return it to the booth.
Receive a signed set.

Keep Take home whatever you end up with.
A random set, a traded set, or a signed set.
The combination is yours.

Luck is a perfect sequence in silver. Play is a random combination in resin. Same objects. Different rules.

Real chance determines your set. Real effort completes it. Most will not get there by luck alone. That is why you trade.

The Art of Conversation. What happens when a brand becomes a reason to talk to a stranger?

2026 / Interactive Installation / Art Basel Hong Kong.

Six identical numbered coasters, from the booth or a participating Starbucks store. Trade with strangers until you hold all six numbers. Every trade is a conversation.

No logos. No banners. The brand is the green dot, printed on the coasters and built into the case your dice come home in. The mechanic is the message.

The value is not the object. The object is a reminder of the value of connection.

A complete set earns a roll at the table and a custom resin set. First 750 participants. Random assignment. Inevitable conversation.

Opepen Set. Opepen is an onchain art protocol: 16,000 tokens, divided into curated sets, assigned permanently when collectors opt in. Six edition tiers (1/1, 4, 5, 10, 20, 40). The Play set brought the dice onchain. Same structure. Same logic.