about us
 
contact us
 
login
 
newsletter
 
facebook
 
 
home hongkong beijing shanghai taipei tokyo seoul singapore
more  
search     
art in hong kong   |   galleries   |   artists   |   artworks   |   events   |   art institutions   |   art services   |   art scene
Para/Site Art Space
22/F, Wing Wah Industrial Building
677 King’s Road
Quarry Bay, Hong Kong   map * 
tel: +852 2517 4620     fax: +852 2517 6850
send email    website  

Enlarge
The Horn of Plenty: Excess and Reversibility
by Para/Site Art Space
Location: Para/Site Art Space
Date: 19 Jun - 2 Aug 2009

Chalk Horse Art Center in Para/Site Art Space

Para/Site Art Space is honored to present The Horn of Plenty: Excess and Reversibility, curated by Australian curator Dougal Phillips. The exhibition showcases a group of contemporary artists from Sydney, and is part of an exchange programme between Chalk Horse Art Center, a contemporary emerging art space based in Australia, and Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong. This exhibition evaluates the meaning of contemporary life and economy through its metaphorical root in ancient mythology. The show includes video, performance, installation and wall drawings.

Since Antiquity the myth has existed of the Horn of Plenty; the cornu copiæ or cornucopia - the magical horn Zeus replaced for the goat Amalthea (who nurtured him), which endlessly overflowed with fruit, flowers and grain, and was forever full of whatever its owner wanted.

In 2009, we see a moment in which the bountiful and seemingly unending excess which has driven us for decades has flirted with the possibility of implosion under its own speculative gravity. Money, for a moment, has gone backwards, spiraling away as assets die and are black-balled or black-holed. Now and again we glimpse a kind of mythological zero point, where this excess is sucked back up into the Horn of Plenty. We see work disappearing: jobs evaporate, constructive labour disappears from sites all over, speculative gambits – architectural and game-based – empty out and are hushed. So what is the art (and the artwork) of disappearing capital? What has happened to work, and is there still room for play and for art?

In this exhibition project the artists jump into this reverse spin cycle: playing with, parodying, clowning and aping the hyperfast and hypertelic economies of labour and exchange. From installing a working nail service to acting as a human sundial, and from reinstating the logos of excess to reviving the icons of saving and spending from Antiquity, the objects and images in this exhibition look to collapsing the orders of work and play for an instant, so as to rethink labour, value and the reversibility of contemporary life.

 

website
Digg Delicious Facebook Share to friend
 

© 2007 - 2024 artinasia.com