Mode of By-Production
Group exhibition, Floor 5 ½, Hong Kong, 9-17 Aug 2014
“And under the conditions of our contemporary product-oriented civilization, time does indeed have problems when it is perceived as being unproductive, wasted, meaningless.” ― Boris Groys
The exhibition Mode of By-production invites artists to interrogate their personal process of artistic productions, identifying thresholds between notions, impulses and unintentional events while juxtaposing with the questioning of their chosen means - tools, raw materials, and use of time.
Time is commodified in the system at large. Check-in, check-out, check-in, check-out, a routine of actions remarkably unchanged. Waking up to go through the same motion again in a subliminal limbo.
By putting in the hours, minutes, seconds, without any means, one fails to see the end product. Between this linear progression from start to finish, a by-product is like carbon dioxide released from burning waste. A by-product can be seen as secondary, otherwise it is equally just a part that informs the other.
Rather than evaluating time or a product wasteful, we are interested in creating meanings from them, that the whole is greater the the sum of its parts. Disruption of a routine, such as loading time, excessive repetition, staring at a fish tank, or in the case of an emergency, these moments may all well be constructive to contemporary society.
Mode of By-production hopes to expand our product-oriented society to reshuffle its hierarchy, by which artists, through their works, have diversely but consistently displayed an interest in embracing uncertainty, giving attention to moments of delay, and elevating the value of the undermined.
Artists: Lewis LAU, Tsi Kwan LAU, Gabriel LEUNG, Cam WONG Lai Yan, Morgan WONG
Fireplace (found object), 150x90x40cm, glass mirror, 2014
Fireplace (constructed), 150x90x40cm, fireproof wall, 35mm slide projection, 2014
Installation view and works by participating artists below:
