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Vivienne Chow

A mini-retrospective of a world-renowned American artist's most iconic neon installations has been aborted because the Hong Kong venue's stringent safety rules were 'too intrusive' on the work.
Joseph Kosuth, an American regarded as a pioneer of conceptual art, had planned to showcase 10 of his neon installations from 1965 to 2011 at the Art HK fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre.  
But the venue management requested that a 1.5-metre-high acrylic screen be set up two metres from the display wall to ensure people did not touch the works, said veteran curator Anna Schwartz, whose Australia-based gallery  has been representing him for more than a decade. They requested that a fire switch - in a yellow box with a red button - be placed next to each neon installation.
After more than a week of talks, the team decided to curate another show instead for the art fair in May.
'This is totally unnecessary' the artist said. 'It's counterproductive. Why be paranoid about neon?'
The smallest piece, Self-defined Object (1966), is 10cm x 172.5cm, while the largest is 2009's The Paradox of Content #4, which is 2.43 metres x 1.64 metres.
 Speaking by telephone from Rome, Kosuth described the incident as a 'comedy'. 
'I've been doing this [since] the mid-'60s all over the world and never had any [problems].' 
Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1945, he began showing in the 1960s and many of his works are now in leading museums, including the 1965 piece One and Three Chairs - in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 
Schwartz said the requirements were too intrusive. 'Neon [installations] are everywhere. Many highly regarded artists use this form and never come to this situation. We wouldn't want to be showing works that are risky anyway,' she said, adding that public art of neon works in Europe were accessible physically.
'Hong Kong's prominence in the art world is growing', but such restrictions were 'contradictory to this extraordinary interest in the arts' brought by the West Kowloon arts hub. She said she was not allowed to use her own workmen who were experienced in neon installations. 
The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (Management) said neon sign installations must be installed at a high level that could not be reached by the public, or have a protective cover. Licensed technicians must also install them. 
It said the venue's guidelines were based on the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department's code of practice for electricity rules. 
A department spokesman said safety requirements for all fixed electrical installations were scripted in the rules, but neon sign installations were not explicitly specified. 
'Nevertheless, the code of practice is not mandatory and hence non-compliance  does not necessarily mean violating the [rules], provided that alternative safety measures or steps have been taken to achieve an equivalent level or even higher safety standard,' the spokesman said.
Art critic Oscar Ho Hing-kay  said that although the venue had to ensure public safety, it had no sense of art exhibitions, installation and design.  'The venue has to show respect and accommodate the artist. They also have very low estimations about the sophistication of the audience, as if they were barbarians roaming around touching everything.'
Art HK's director Magnus Renfrew  said all installations had to meet regulatory standards.



Artist scraps show in anger at 'paranoid' safety rules