Yuming Lu

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01 Sculptures & Installations



Alltrade(sprobuilding)andma(i)n(tenance) (2026)
Volkswagen Transporter sliding door, commercial vinyl lettering (partially removed)
150 × 120 × 15 cm


Yuming Lu repurposes a salvaged 2004 Volkswagen Transporter sliding door through a process of rigorous subtraction. By peeling away commercial vinyl, the artist excavates the word “Trade” (a term rooted in Polari, carrying the nostalgia of old school queer code). What remains after reads like an offer of service: a clipped promise, a fragment glimpsed on a late-night hookup profile page. A door is built to regulate access: it opens, slides, withholds, and permits entry. Here, it becomes a threshold between longing and fantasy. The final “OOF” registers as visceral satisfaction, hovering at the edge of a lover’s physical impact. The work extends this tension into a paradox of power. In the gallery, Lu claims the cultural privilege to aestheticize a working-class livelihood, treating the door as canvas and artifact. Yet the edited text confesses an inversion: within the sexual economy of “trade,” the artist surrenders agency to the hyper-masculine ideal he pursues, ultimately revealing that the desire demands he be the one who serves.



Safe Sex 2 (2025)
Van Door, vinyl, laser cut on stainless Steel 
160cm x 120cm
Safe Sex 2 addresses the paradox of gay intimacy in London: high sexual accessibility coexists with emotional unavailability. While PrEP and doxyPEP produce a sense of sexual safety, romantic experience remains precarious, shaped by accelerated dating, racial hierarchy, idealized bodies and chemsex.


Take A Seat (2024)
Car doors, UV-printed vinyl, lase-cut acrylic, oil paint on acrylic, piercing ring, wood.
220cm x 170cm x 80cm
Using car doors as stand-ins for the idealized gay male body, this work explores self-objectification, desire, and shame. Industrial, masculine surfaces mirror fantasies of muscular perfection, while exposing my inability to escape a system I understand but remain bound to.

Stereo Heart (2026)
Carved salvaged car doors, tape, acrylic paint 
230 × 220 × 25 cm 
Shown on 21.02.26 at HARDWEAR by Goadome Nike, London
"Dear Peter, I hate when you invoke my name. It is not my name; it is an identity I constructed for this city, 9,000 miles from my site of origin. You will never truly comprehend me, or the archive of what I was. But, dear Peter, I love when I speak your name. It creates a rupture where, suspended in the precise temporality of those two spoken syllables, the heartbeat fractures the stereo, and I belong to you."


Overdrive  (2025)
Acrylic paint and marker pen on van doors, reflective tape, 3D print
210cm x 180cm
Valentines  (2026)
Car wing panel, found image printed on vinyl
75 x 120 x 20 cm
Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” Today, this mediation has overtaken our most intimate desires. In an era of industrialized pornography, romantic ideals are packaged, priced, and narrowed by algorithms into consumable labels. This artwork questions whether genuine romantic tension can survive without becoming a sellable spectacle.


Mega Crush  (2025)
Car Seat, acrylic paint, exhaust pipe
190cm x 200cm

LTR (2025)
Leather, acrylic paint, rope, chains, piercing ring.
200cm x 200cm


4/4 (2025)
Mixed Media.
190cm x 60cm

Safe Sex (2024)
Car door, inkjet print on paper, acrylic paint, wood.
130cm x 110cm 


Dan Che (2024)
Single channel video 5'33''
Size Variable
Car multimedia display screen, reflection tape.
30cm x 25cm


I Go (2023)
UV-printed acrylic, laser-cut acrylic, acetate, stainless steel hanging system.
200cm x 100cm x 40cm