Gold by Serakai Studio’s new exhibition, ‘Certainly’, leans into today’s unpredictability
Hong Kong’s Gold by Serakai Studio embraces unpredictability in its inaugural art exhibition, showcasing diverse, boundary-pushing artists
In today’s climate of political unrest, how does the art world navigate instability across regions?
The exhibition’s tongue-in-cheek title, “Certainly”, is inspired by American artist-composer La Monte Young’s 1960 “score”, a conceptual art piece titled Composition 1960 #10 that reads: “Draw a straight line and follow it.”
Young’s was an “event score”, a type of performance art, inspired by the Fluxus artistic movement’s blending of mediums, in which the artist would write a sentence and the idea or realisation of that sentence is the artwork, explains Tobias Berger, co-founder and curatorial director of the new cultural think tank Serakai Studio.
“You can never draw a straight line [without aid]. It’s impossible,” he says. “And so, it is about opportunity; it’s about uncertainty; it’s about going from one place to another and taking chances.”
This is Berger’s first major exhibition in Hong Kong since he left his former post as Tai Kwun’s head of art in 2022, and he and the curatorial team at Gold brought in 50 works from 11 artists across cultures, mediums and career stages. The curatorial focus is “much more open” than when he was employed in public institutions such as Hong Kong’s M+ museum, where “we knew exactly what we had to deliver”.