By Michael Gold

So-called "found" art doesn't usually have the same classic beauty as painting or sculpture, though conceptually it can go places more traditional artforms can barely touch. But for avant-garde found-art husband-and-wife team Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, who jointly go by the surrealist moniker "Ghost of a Dream," and whose first-ever China exhibit, The Price of Happiness, opened Saturday, concept and form coexist in equal measure. Happiness is both aesthetic and grand, despite the almost laughably chintzy "found" foundation upon which it rests: a combo of lottery tickets and Chinese joss paper commonly called "hell money."

Happiness' stunning title piece, a vast, kaleidoscopic wall of swirling colors and mesmerizing geometrical patterns, only reveals itself to be made of hell money upon very close inspection. Eckstrom said they incorporated motifs they noticed in the Forbidden City, among other historical Beijing locales, into the design. "The exhibit doesn't really have an 'Eastern' focus per se ... we believe that people from all cultures and walks of life can relate to our theme," Was said.

Eckstrom and Was seem to have brought the found-art movement full-circle, to a place aesthetically stunning yet conceptually flimsy, at least compared to other found-art vanguard artists like Ko Siu Lan, a fellow Galerie Paris-Beijing alumna whose pieces possess a philosophical sophistication lacking in Happiness.

Despite the intense calculation and laborious toil put into the exhibit ("a year's worth of work compressed to five weeks," said Eckstrom), it has a spontaneous feeling that engenders far more intimacy than other found exhibits could claim to have. The mirrored chamber installation You're Getting Closer to Your Goals is perhaps the most dramatic example - papered on all four walls by lottery tickets and hell money scraps, its reflective surfaces on the floor and ceiling extend carnival-esque wallpaper endlessly and breathlessly.

"All our work is comprised of the remnants of people's dreams," Was explained of using lottery tickets and hell money. Fitting that they've infused such cheap trinkets with so many artistic underpinnings. It's as if, deep down, all anyone dreams about is living inside a beautiful painting.

Where: Galerie Paris-Beijing, 798 Art District

When: Until December 7

Contact: 5978-9262