Chitralekha Basu
If art fairs were started to liberate art from the confines of galleries and auction houses and bring it into the domain of the masses, the idea appeared to have reached a whole new level during Hong Kong’s ongoing art week. The spotlight was turned on the spectators as much as the spectacle. Not only is some of the fare on display at Art Central and Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) — the city’s two major fairs, now running simultaneously — made complete with active participation from the audience. A few of them wouldn’t even exist without a viewer.
The Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures series showing at ABHK is a case in point. Within an hour of the fair opening on March 27, intrepid experience hunters were seen happily putting their heads inside an empty cabinet with a missing plank, bending from waist downwards to see things from a different angle, following the artist’s directions.
Elsewhere in the de Sarthe gallery booth, visitors were being handed plastic rose-pink ping pong balls. Inside each of these was an invitation to “book a service” with the “Unknown Artists Agency” to get more information on an artist they might consider supporting. Apparently there were 10,000 names of artists on the list, drawn up by the artist Wang Xin, waiting to be discovered by the people who cared about art.
Outside the exhibition halls, in the BMW art lounge, there was a rush to get photographed against the backdrop of a futuristic black BMW model. However, there was more to this apparently-regular scenario comprising selfie-hunters than met the naked eye. The augmented reality experience designed around the “art” car by the multimedia artist Cao Fei became apparent only when the photographs were taken using an app, opening up a vision of colorful doodles, spiraling up the frame, emulating the distended arc of the car roof.
Cao says her work is a tribute to technology’s gift to mankind in the form of enhanced vision. “In my work, the levitated and floating light has escaped from the physical body of the car, which instils a sense of lightness within us. The light that emanates from the car body suggests that light and car exist in a mutual ‘parasitic relationship’,” she adds, stressing the sense of freedom and release she wants her audiences to experience.
Grabbing attention
At about the same time in Art Central, bang in the middle of the food court, the Singaporean artist Sam Lo was inviting visitors to have a go at playing The Game of Leaders. In this re-imagined version of the well-known Jenga blocks game, participants are invited to remove and reposition blocks inscribed with messages like “Increase GDP”, “Higher Education”, “Increase Standard of Living”, “each reflecting a trait of a first-world city,” according to Lo. “The goal is to choose (or not choose) your blocks to progress your city with, taking care not to topple the structure.”
Lo says the game is meant to serve as a “visual metaphor” of a first-world city. As the players make decisions regarding prioritizing one policy over another, they would likely make a connection with the steps taken, and compromises made, towards building a great worldclass city in real life. And so would the onlookers, who are expected to cheer on and lead the participants The Vitrine of Dancing Cultures,