CityU event examines the value of art

An annual exhibition and a symposium examining the “value” of art will be co-presented by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and the Osage Art Foundation as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the University.

 

This year’s event, called “Market Forces”, will question “value”. In 2012, “Market Forces, Whither Contemporary Art?” asked whether we could find new paradigms for intellectual and artistic inquiry and debate, and for 2013, “Market Forces: The Friction of Opposites” emphasised value in terms of moral or societal notions. For 2014, veteran curator Mr Charles Merewether has been invited to curate the third annual offering, called “Market Forces; Erasure: From Conceptualism to Abstraction”. The exhibition will be held at Osage Hong Kong and CityU.

 

The symposium accompanying the exhibition, to be moderated by Mr David Elliot, is entitled “Art and Values”. The invited speakers, including Mr Jens Hoffmann, Ms Biljana Ciric, Mr Charles Merewether, Mr Kurt Chan Yuk-keung and Mr Enin Supriyanto, will examine the increasingly over-determined economic interpretation of the value of art.

 

 

The basis of the exhibition is to question “value” as assigned or measured by the global art markets; more specifically, it aims to critically engage with the increasingly pervasive conflation of aesthetic value with market price—a phenomena which has been exacerbated by the booming contemporary market’s general tendency to favour particular media, styles and “brands”. Art in this case is reduced to a vehicle for representation rather than a basis for exploring ideas and issues or a way of engaging with the world through the senses; in other words, subject matter takes precedence over the concept and materiality of works.   

 

For docent-guided visits, please contact Ms Grace Lam at gracelam@osagegallery.com or (852) 2389 8332.

 

 

 

 

Starting from the general question of aesthetic values versus market price, speakers will each respond by focusing on the different conditions for art production within different localities, as well as the global art market, with a particular emphasis on the situation in Hong Kong and Asia. Drawing on similar issues of contention as the exhibition, the symposium will draw connections between different regions and their value systems, critically examining the market driven interpretations of works, and issues of representation versus intrinsic aesthetic values.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The symposium is open to the public. Simultaneous interpretation (English–Mandarin) will be provided.

 

For registration, please contact Ms Grace Lam at gracelam@osagegallery.com or (852) 2389 8332.

 

 

Charles Merewether was born in Scotland and earned his PhD in Art History from the University of Sydney. He is an art historian and writer on modernism and contemporary art who has taught at universities in the United States, Mexico and South America, Australia and Singapore. He was Collections Curator at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles from 1994 to 2004, Artistic Director and Curator for the 2006 Sydney Biennale, Deputy Director for the Cultural District, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi from 2007 to 2008, and Director at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS), LASALLE College of the Arts from 2010 to 2013. Since 1991 and at the ICAS, he has curated a number of major exhibitions of major artists from across South America and Asia, including Central Asia. He has published extensively articles and books including Ai Weiwei: Under Construction (2008) and Ai Weiwei: Beijing, Venice, London, Herzog & de Meuron (2008) and After Memory: The Art of Milenko Prvački – 40 Years (2013). He has also co-edited After the Event: New Perspectives on Art History (2010), Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the public sphere in postwar Japan 1950-1970, (2007). He is currently Visiting Professor of the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.

 

 

David Elliott is a curator and writer who has directed contemporary art museums and institutions in Oxford, Stockholm, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney and Kiev. A specialist in Soviet and Russian avant-garde, as well as in modern and contemporary Asian art, he has published widely in these fields as well as on many other aspects of contemporary art. He is currently Artistic Director of A Time for Dreams, the IV International Biennale of Young Art, to open in Moscow in June 2014, co-curator of PANDAMONIUM: New Media Art from Shanghai (on show in Berlin at present), and associate curator of the Hors Piste Film Festival in Tokyo. He was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for museums of modern and contemporary art) from 1998 to 2004, and is currently President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London, Chairman of MOMENTUM in Berlin, a member of the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Guest Lecturer in Curatorship at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.  In 2008–10 he was Artistic Director of the 17^th Biennale of Sydney and in 2011–12 directed the inaugural International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Kiev, Ukraine.  He has also advised the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charitable Trust on the development of the Central Police Station heritage site into a centre for contemporary art.

Ms Kaya Lo

kayalo@osagegallery.com| +852 2389 8322 | +852 2172 1693

 

 

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