Clamour can Melt Gold

  Clamour can melt gold. a contemporary art exhibition displayed in Edouard Malingue Gallery features several artists' artistic interpretation of gold. From literal presentation of gold, the commodification of gold to the political view or the backstory of gold, this exhibition made me realize Gold, is not just a color or a property, it can also represent different things in different perspective.

   For this time, since the guide from the exhibition was explaining the artworks' meaning to all of us, though it gives us less time and freedom to interpret the artworks by ourselves, it helped us to understand what the artists were trying to do with their work. One of the artwork i really liked is a work from He XiangYu - "200g gold, 62g protein', an egg carton painted in gold and with only one egg on the side. Without the guide's explanation, i would have no idea what this artwork is trying to say, but after her explanation, i find it so meaningful and it was one of my favorite in the exhibition. She said it was a symbol of the one child policy in China that all the funds (gold in the carton) go and support the egg to cultivate. I like this artwork as it is so simple and it's something we see in everday's lives but it is embedded with so many symbolic meaning and the meaning makes perfect sense to what is presented.

     One thing i learned from this exhibition is how the work is placed can affect meaning. First, for artwork placed opposite to each other can create meaning like the work from Alfredo Jaar. He shows the relationship of a static picture of gold mining and a live video of gold mining. This placement of artwork alone can create meaning of how we see things. Also, His Work 'Gold in the morning' which have two lightboxes with color further shows us how space/ presentation of artwork can provoke different thoughts and meaning and how we interpret them. At first, when we just walk in, we would only see the blocked image showing a far angle of people working in the mine. But when we get closer and trying to peek over the blocked image, we see a closed up of some people climbing uphill and the distance is actually much closer. What this work made me think is that how the artist trying to represent an artwork may not be the truth to the whole truth and space can really shape different interpretation. Just like Gold, it may only mean the commodity we buy in jewelry shop, but if we take a different angle to explore more about that, it can mean so much more like the values in different people.