Journey to the East: Three Years in the Making
A new book bringing together more than a decade of art, presented in a first edition of 300 copies for family and friends.

25th Sep 2026

Journey to the East brings together more than a decade of Jacky Tsai’s artistic life, from his early Floral Skull works and encounters between Eastern and Western imagery to his collaboration with Jay Chou and the launch of an art-painted rocket.

The book began to take shape after four exhibitions in 2023. What followed was three years of careful selection, writing and revision: looking again at the works, considering how they speak to one another, and refining the language of every chapter. The result is a considered account of a practice that has continued to move between cultures, materials and scales.

Nine chapters, one evolving journey

The opening chapters, Floral Skull, Animal World and East Meets West, establish some of the recurring images and cultural encounters at the heart of Tsai’s work. They bring together the skull as a structure filled with life, the expressive possibilities of animals and flowers, and the meeting of Chinese visual traditions with Western popular culture.

Parody of Jay’s Music gives a chapter to the collaboration with Jay Chou, while The Pandemic Era and Chinese Illusions open further perspectives on the experiences, stories and imaginative worlds that have shaped the work. Together, these chapters allow familiar images to be seen alongside the circumstances and ideas behind them.

For the first time since the painting was completed, the book decodes the more than sixty Jay Chou songs hidden within Parody of Jay’s Music, identifying the songs and revealing where—and how—each is represented in the composition. It offers readers a guide to visual secrets that have remained unexplained for years.

The final sequence—Traditional & Future, Sea, Land, Air, Space and Burning Before Forty—widens the journey towards craftsmanship, experimentation and projects beyond the gallery. These titles connect inherited skills with new possibilities, and the intimate work of making with an ambition to carry art into different environments, including outer space.

The chapter texts were developed and carefully refined through an extended dialogue between Tsai and ChatGPT. Framed by the artist’s own preface and an epilogue credited to ChatGPT, the book gives words and images room to work together. Its magenta clothbound cover and embroidered imagery also bring this attention to making into the book itself.

A Mid-Autumn gift edition

The book was introduced for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a time of reunion and a fitting connection to Chang’E Flying to the Moon. Tsai’s 2025 rocket project with LANDSPACE carried the ancient story of Chang’E into a new setting, bringing mythology, contemporary art and space exploration together.

The first edition comprises 300 copies, reserved as gifts for family and friends rather than offered for sale. Presented in a specially designed gift box, each set brings the book together with a limited-edition space jacket developed in collaboration with, and authorised by, LANDSPACE.

The jacket extends the story told in the pages into a wearable form, with patches recalling the rocket collaboration. At the centre of the set remains the book: a carefully assembled record of the works, ideas and people that have shaped Tsai’s journey, shared first with those close to it.

Journey to the East
First edition: 300 copies, for private gifting only.
Space jacket developed in collaboration with, and authorised by, LANDSPACE.