DenimEconomics in Swizerland

 

As part of my project Denim Economics I was taking part in a Group Exposition “Markets & Man” in Kunstraum Baden, Switzerland.

STADT BADEN

Kunstraum Baden

 

Markets & Man 

Of economic and other values 

Meschac Gaba, Rémy Markowitsch, Ursula Palla, Mark Vennegoor & Binelde Hyrcan

Preview Saturday April 29, 5-7 pm

Image by Mark Vennegoor (detail)

Markets & Man April 30 to July 9, 2017 

«Markets & Man» is an exhibition on tangible and intangible values. In our world, everything is being measured by monetary value, though it has long been proven that happiness and content do not correlate directly with material wealth. Physical and psychological well-being can only in  a limited way be assessed by monetary values. Nevertheless, there is an overwhelming tendency to take money as an absolute benchmark to explain the functioning of the globalized world.

With their works, the invited artists put up new contexts for discussion, drawing threads between emotions and capital, between dreams that become reality and secret, unfulfilled longings. They plot a different course of trading, beyond what stock market indices and share prices might want to define – an option deal with an open end, with high chances of profit, but not on the monetary side.

The exhibition focuses on different aspects of the subject in generous settings, the majority of which have been developed specifically for the context of the exhibition. Meschac Gaba (*1961, lives in Rotterdam and Cotonou, Benin), Rémy Markowitsch (*1957, lives in Lucerne and Berlin), Ursula Palla (*1962, lives in Zurich), Mark Vennegoor (*1981, lives in Amsterdam) and Binelde Hyrcan (*1982, lives in Luanda and Nice).

Once a year, the Kunstraum is devoted to a social theme. Art makes it possible to see the world with different eyes, to reassess facts from an unfamiliar perspective, to gain insights. After «Warzone Peace» (on the occasion of the memorial of the piece treaty in Baden 1714) and «Kein schöner Land» on the subject of the refugee problem and the domestic discourse on values, «Markets & Man» will contribute to an economic debate which, at its very centre, has life itself. 

«Markets & Man» is curated by Claudia Spinelli & Rolf Bismarck, curators of the Kunstraum, in collaboration with the Dutch-Swiss curator Hanneke Frühauf who initiated the project.