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Plus-Minus-Zero, 2010

2010
Video
3’00”
HD / Color / Stereo

Collection

Private Collection (Hong Kong)

Selected Exhibitions

2013
“Move on Asia – Video Art in Asia 2002 to 2012”, Media Museum ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

2012
“Running on the Sidelines”, Soka Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan
“Hong Kong Diary”, 25 Bilder/Sekunde, Mannheim, Germany

2011
“One Hour”, 2P Contemporary Art Gallery, Hong Kong, China
“The Knife’s Edge”, Fremantle Art Centre, Perth, Australia

2010
“No Soul For Soul“, Tate Modern, London, UK
“Move On Asia 2010”, Para/site Art Space, Hong Kong, China; GalleryLOOP, Seoul, Korea
Performance at Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan

Artist Statement

Morgan Wong’s exploration is a time performance reminiscent of Back To The Future scientific logics. As video is frequently categorized as time based media, this work connects time, distance, technology and travel. Whilst this work is related to a fax work that was commissioned for the exhibition FAX, and shown at Para/Site Art Space, it is also a perfectly autonomous work through the discourse it holds. When we see the artist walking backwards and anti-clockwise, in order to reverse time, and turn the “clock” back 56 minutes and 6 seconds, we can only reflect on the pointless attempt of traveling through time, and in the process bring closer Hong Kong and Sapporo, by vanishing the time difference between the two places. The selection of an outdoor location is not random, it places us in a landscape, and this allows us to position the artist in the white countryside of Sapporo, in Japan, where this video has been produced. As a complex physics theory, where you only grasp the skin of it, this video is constructed with multiple mechanics. Is the artist really walking backwards? We can see the other skiers passing by following the “right” direction. Why is snow going backwards as well? The simple poetics of a rambler in a white landscape is turned around, through the process of reframing time by symbolically pressing the fast-forward or the return button. It is through all these contradictions and collisions between technology, brain logics, time, optical illusions, distance and travel that the artist builds this reflection.

Text by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya
Curator, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (then-curator at Para/site Art Space, Hong Kong)

Plus-Minus-Zero
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Plus Minus Zero
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Plus-Minus-Zero
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