Art

Art by Gary Sheng. Each series iterates on a single theme.

I make things under the name the Christofuturist. Paintings, songs, picture books, websites, and the rooms where people meet each other. They are one body of work, and they argue one thing: technology and divine inspiration belong together, and the art gets better when they are.

The machine is fast and has no taste. A person has taste and is slow. Put them in the right order and you can make things that were not previously worth making, at a quality that used to require a budget.

Read the artist statement

A family of three seen from behind in silhouette on a dark hillside at night: a woman with a full halo of curls on the left, a man with straight dark hair on the right, and a small child between them holding both their hands. All three have their faces tilted up toward a radiant four-pointed golden cross burning high in a deep navy, star-filled sky. A wide column of gold light pours down from it and becomes a glowing river winding through the dark valley below, which is scattered with the small warm lights of distant homes.

Let Your Love Flow

Five songs, each sung three times: in English, in Amharic and in Mandarin. A covenant record, sung to a house that does not exist yet.

15 songs

A kneeling figure in silhouette before a tall arched window filled with blinding white-gold light, hands clasped and head bowed, long shafts of light stretching across a dark stone floor toward the viewer.

learn to love obedience

One whispered Jersey club mantra, sung every way it could be sung. Not my way, Your way.

31 songs

A young woman leaning on a wooden boardwalk railing at dusk, wearing large 1980s over-ear headphones with a coiled cable and holding a portable cassette player, her face lifted toward broad rays of gold light coming down over the water. Gulls overhead, palms and streetlamps behind her, a lit city skyline across the bay, deep royal-blue sky above a peach horizon.

A Treasure More Than Gold

Obey, and what you receive is what your true self actually wanted. Nostalgic 1980s Japanese city-pop, sung in four languages.

30 songs

A standing woman robed entirely in luminous white and gold light, her head tilted back and one arm raised, her hair streaming out in filaments of light. Heavy dark encrusted sheets peel away from the front of her lower body and fall, piling into a mound of discarded black crust at her feet, against a deep midnight navy darkness.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Two verses, whispered and left alone, while the genre changes underneath them. The words never move; everything around them does. Mostly instrumental and deliberately sparse, built to be lived in rather than listened at.

8 songs

A luminous gold cymatic figure on a deep midnight-navy ground: the intricate, perfectly symmetrical mandala-like pattern that fine gold powder forms on a vibrating plate when a single sustained tone is sounded, its bright nodes and radiating lines fading into faint concentric rings at the edges.

Spoken Words of Life

Scripture spoken over you on slow, sparse, psychedelic UK garage. Every track carries exactly one verse and nothing else — no chorus, no second line, no writing around it. The verse is spoken, repeated, and left mostly alone in the instrumental. Most of them are God talking in the first person to whoever is listening: I have called you by name. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. I will never leave you.

14 songs

A faceless figure in matte bone-cream armour sits at a wooden desk in a dark navy room, wearing large gold over-ear headphones, head bowed toward an open book propped on a low angled wooden stand; a four-pointed star glows on the chestplate and a shaft of warm gold light falls across the desk from a tall window behind him.

Kingdom Lo-Fi

Whispered devotion at 80 BPM. Each track takes one short phrase and repeats it until it stops being language and turns into a place to sit. The sparseness is the whole design: this is music to study under, pray under, or fall asleep to.

10 songs

Musical Vibes Don't Lie

Four lines, and the genre is the only slot that moves: hey jersey house love, hey two-step love, hey funk love. A love song sung to the music itself, then sung again to the next kind of music, which turns out to be the same song every time.

7 songs

The Christofuturist seen from behind in bone-cream armour and a deep blue cape, walking a lit diagonal track across a dark plain at night, following a single small flame that floats unsupported in the air ahead of him; the flame and his own blazing body are the only light in the frame.

Holy Ghost (Wherever You Direct Me I Go)

Four lines: holy, Holy Ghost, I go, where you direct me I go. The words never change. The genre does, from a seaside balearic pulse through Chicago house and trance to a peak-time dubstep slam, and out into a whisper slow enough to sleep to.

10 songs

A single tall open doorway standing alone on a dark empty plain under a night sky, warm gold light flooding out through it and running across the ground, with one small figure seen from behind walking toward the opening, still far from it.

Encounter Me

Thirteen tracks and one prayer: encounter me Lord, encounter me more, I want more. The words never change. The genre does — neo-soul, amapiano, trance, jersey house, tech house, dubstep, and a last track stripped back to almost nothing.

13 songs

One small figure alone in a vast dark hall, arms raised straight up into a broad shaft of gold light tearing down through a split in the roof far above, haze churning inside the beam. A few dark unlit speaker cabinets sit low in the shadows at the edges of the room.

kingdubstep

Kingdom dubstep. Worship with the bass turned all the way up, and the drop as a holy event.

11 songs

A wooden study desk under a wide open window at dawn: a stack of books, an open book, a spiral notebook with a pen across it, reading glasses, a cup of tea, a small plant and a lit brass desk lamp. A keyboard on a stand stands against the wall behind. Through the window, low golden sun over a garden and a stone house whose gable carries a glowing four-pointed star cross.

Holy Focus

Music for studying: afro house and amapiano piano over a deep-house floor, drifting into ambient by the end. Nothing is sung, so nothing asks for your attention. Put it on and get to work.

13 songs

A white dove with its wings raised, hovering at the centre of a vast corona of white-gold light that fills most of the frame and fades outward through warm gold into deep midnight-navy dark at the edges, with faint shafts of light radiating out from behind it.

Heavenly Shine

Five full songs and seventeen loops of their own chorus. The record began as one hook taken across every genre it would survive, Jersey club through amapiano, afrohouse, deep house and a room after midnight. Then the hook got its verses, and the loops became the appendix they always were.

22 songs

Cut-paper collage of a gold mirror ball high in the frame throwing hard-edged paper rays across an orange sky, with dozens of raised hands and hats below it in saturated torn paper of every colour.

Proof of Vibes

Sixteen tracks made for Russ Ballard's birthday: Jersey club bounce under house, singing the way Proof of Vibes talks. Come as you are, bring all your vibes, art and culture and life.

16 songs

Golden-hour courtyard at a beautiful compound: a long wooden table still set with plates and juice glasses while a joyful, mostly Black and visibly mixed group of young people is up dancing around it, sunlight flaring through the trees, a brass North Star Cross with a long bottom point mounted on the stone wall behind them.

Abbapiano

The first Abbapiano album. Amapiano is the catchiest thing you can put on in the background, and the point of Abbapiano is simple: make it easy to glorify God while dancing to catchy African sounds. The daily declarations, over jungle house and log-drum grooves. The art is Afrochristofuturism, and its point is the best possible future for Africa and the diaspora. Each track’s art is a woven pattern organized around the Cross, one pattern per declaration.

15 songs

Listen on Spotify

An immense ornately-paneled dark gate fills a wall of night, its two doors open just a crack; a narrow blade of warm gold light breaks through the widening gap from top to bottom and lands precisely on one small figure standing before the gate, casting long shadows across the dark stone ground.

The Lord’s House Declares

An album. These are declarations I actually say every day, inspired by Apostle Delmar, set over house grooves as an experiment: mostly tech house, some melodic house. Each track is one line of Scripture said in first person and repeated until it stops being words you are saying and starts being something you believe. The club has been discipling people with repetition for decades; this just changes what gets repeated.

7 songs

A tiny silhouetted figure walks a lit path across a dark rocky plain toward a horizon flooded with golden light; rays fan upward into a starry navy sky, and the path glows gold ahead of the walker.

You Won’t Let Me Down

An album. Seven anthems in the Illenium lane, each one sung TO God rather than about Him, in a voice barely above a whisper set against drops built for a festival field. The art holds the same argument the music makes: one small person, and a light that arrives from outside them and does not run out.

7 songs

A painted night landscape in navy and gold: a radiant four-pointed star over layered mountain ridges, monumental baobab silhouettes, and a tiny rim-lit figure walking the near ground.

Living Dioramas

Three living dioramas played as one album, one argument in three movements: the heavens declare the glory, the light is received in a dark room, and a city set on a hill shines it back out. Every scene is painted in layers that move to its own song, under one family law: the sources stay still, the light does the living, and the ground never shakes, because somebody is standing on it. These ones move; click through and press play.

3 pieces

A three-dimensional night cosmos of glowing particles: a dome of stars over a dark breathing sea, a golden sun and pale moon, a small island bearing a figure of warm light, and a four-pointed North Star Cross constellation at the zenith.

And God Said

Creation by declaration, in three dimensions. Genesis 1 is a sequence of commands, and this cosmos executes them to the music: out of a formless deep, light divides from darkness, a firmament of stars arcs overhead, the sea gathers around a risen island, sun and moon ignite, life wheels over the waters, a figure of light stands on the land, and the finished heavens rest with the North Star Cross sealed in the stars. What is created stays created; the drum sends waves of brightness, never motion. This one moves; click through and speak it into being.

One piece

Three flat color plates in a row on a midnight ground: a nested-squares Homage to the Square in russet and amber, a gold and a violet field each holding an identical warm gray rectangle, and a gold sheet crossing a rose sheet whose overlap color makes them read as transparent.

The Same Color

A live color study after Josef Albers, who painted nested squares for twenty-six years to prove you have never seen a color by itself. Nine of his classroom experiments run here in code: one color becomes two, two colors become one, opaque paint becomes glass, a long stare pays out a color no screen can render, a flat gray bends, a weave of royal and gold fuses in the eye, one thread recolors a whole rug, a spinning black-and-white disk conjures color out of nothing, and an endless run of generated Homages continues his series in squares and quarter circles. Every deception is performed fresh, each time, by your own eyes. This one moves; click through and be deceived.

One piece

A dark navy canvas where an umbrella made entirely of tiny declaration text sheds falling grey words like you’re not enough and give up, with a handle spelling The Lord is my shepherd.

Protection

The oldest piece here, and the argument underneath all the albums: the enemy’s words fall like rain, and the covering is woven from daily declarations. Hand-coded in canvas, and it has been raining ever since. This one moves; click through and stand under it.

One piece

Oil painting in deep near-black. Towering walls of driving rain and black water rear up on both sides of a narrow corridor and curve overhead, leaving a parted channel down the middle. A woman walks away from the viewer along it, seen from behind and slightly to the side, mid-stride and barefoot on dry ground, in the same terracotta dress and oatmeal wrap. Her hair and clothes are completely dry and a warm golden light rests on her. A single small upright flame of gold light, no larger than a fist and with no face or body, hovers in the air ahead of her and lights the path.

Through the Waters

Somebody is handed the thing that ends their life as they have it, on an ordinary weekday, and takes it standing up. Then the same person, the same day, the same clothes, walks straight into the storm it became. It opens around them and they cross on dry ground, untouched, following a small flame that is not theirs.

6 pieces