Published by Leonardo Calcagno
Balance Sheets
June 4–July 18, 2015
Opening: June 3, 6–8pm
Edouard Malingue Gallery
Sixth floor, 33 Des Voeux Road Central
Hong Kong
Curated by Kit Hammonds
As part of its curatorial projects, Edouard Malingue Gallery is pleased to present Balance Sheets, a group exhibition curated by Kit Hammonds. Bringing together works by Duncan Campbell, Lia Forslund, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Han Ishu, Toril Johannessen, Gabriel Kuri, João Vasco Paiva, Heidi Voet, and Hannes Zebedin, the exhibition explores the relationship between art and economics.
“Balance Sheets is an international group show that draws out relationships between ideas of balance in aesthetics, economics and ecological thinking.
Taking its title from accountancy, Balance Sheets takes looks at how we measure value between different fields ‘on paper.’ In finance the balance sheet has a sort of virtual aesthetics, a ‘correct’ and stable form of representation where business income and expenditure of resources are presented as equal—even if this includes a surplus or profit. This notion of balance is equally a vital element in formal and traditional artistic composition. Its value has been displaced from visual perfection of the golden section in painting, or the contra-posto in sculpture, and now resides in a conceptual realm—a move that is traced through modernist abstraction, minimalist and conceptual practices. While this history rejects composition in form, there remains a sense of balance between visuality and artistic process and materials.
The artists proposed move between these areas of material production and intellectual or conceptual work. Their works on paper move between the representational value of the materials—paper money, business reports, or charts—to emphasise these process of exchange of values between language and representation—that is working drawings or sculptural work related to the themes. This further reflects on another notion of balance that is in common currency—that of ‘precarity.'”
–Kit Hammonds
Kit Hammonds (b. 1975, UK, lives in London and Taipei) is an independent curator whose practice includes exhibition and event-making, education, as well as critical and creative writing. His recent projects include Co-Curator of the CAFA Museum Biennale, Beijing; curator of Blue Lines, Red Threads, Serralves Museum, Porto; Co-Founder of Index Art Book Fair, Guadalajara and Mexico City; and Director-in-Residence at the Taipei Contemporary Art Center (all 2014). From 2007 to 2015 he held the position of Senior Curator in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London and in 2015 was a recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship, 2015.
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