Featuring artists from around the world, the exhibition explores the interaction of contemporary art and televisual culture
HONG KONG, Sept. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, launched Killing TV, a new exhibition about how contemporary artists deploy, disrupt, and deconstruct television as a medium. The artworks in the exhibition — dating from the 1970s up to the present day, by 15 artists from around the world — shed light on how television has influenced art, particularly how artists have reflected on and challenged television's pervasive power on culture as a whole. Curated by Jill Angel Chun and Tiffany Leung, Killing TV runs from 27 September to 19 November 2023.
Ant Farm, Media Burn (1975)
For decades, television has been a major mass medium globally, transforming how we have consumed information, news, and entertainment. With social media on the rise, however, television — especially live TV and broadcasting — has been overtaken by digital platforms and steaming technologies.
A notable highlight of the exhibition takes the form of a revolving black carousel of obsolete TVs which serve as "canvases" for five artworks. Resting on a sofa, a viewer can look at the artworks coming and going. Appearing when in front of the sofa, each artwork's signal fades out once it is outside the viewer's gaze, as if an invisible hand were controlling the remote control. Evoking memories of a bygone era when television shows adhered to fixed schedules, drawing families and friends together for communal viewing, it stands in stark contrast with today's atomising on-demand streaming culture.
With video works that take in performance art as well as sculptural installations — from parodying TV shows to appropriating TV commercials — the broad range of works in Killing TV invites audiences to embrace artistic experimentation and discover unfamiliar formats and settings. Together, the different artists explore issues of identity, consumerism, and human relationships in society, thus probing the mass psychological and social impact of television from new perspectives. Ultimately, these artists offer us different way of looking at television as a medium — a medium which has fundamentally affected the way we understand ourselves and the world.
Artists in Killing TV
Killing TV
Curators: Jill Chun and Tiffany Leung
27 September–19 November 2023
(Closed on Mondays, except when a public holiday falls on Monday)
11am–7pm
1/F F Hall (entry through JC Contemporary)
For more information, please visit our website: https://www.taikwun.hk.
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