What is the value of art to life?

Onomatopee 151
The Trouble with Value
April 21–July 27 
opening at Onomatopee Eindoven (NL), Saturday, April 21, 6–11pm
With the participation of: Benera and Estefan, Rachel Carey, gerlach en koop, Fokus Grupa, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Monique Hendriksen, Arnoud Holleman and Gert Jan Kocken, Kornel Janczy, Adrian Paci, Feliks Szyszko, Timm Ulrichs.

Onomatopee 160
being as becoming
liberating-art and/or liberating art
April 11–May 5
Opening #1/2: Bus Projects Melbourne Wednesday April 11, 6-8pm
Featuring artists Sanne Vaassen and Tim Breukers
The artists will be available for conversations every Wednesday from 6pm. 

# 2 / 2 – Onomatopee Eindhoven
September 7–October 7
Featuring artists Philippine Hoegen and Alex Farrar
The artists are available for conversations every Friday at 6pm.

The Trouble with Value discusses the tangled story of the symbolic and economic value that a work of art holds, being a product of its maker’s labour; with an attempt to provide insights into current notions of value and value systems surrounding us. Following its first chapter at Bunkier Sztuki, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland The Trouble with Value arrives with a second iteration to Onomatopee.

Is art capable of escaping (and should it) a commodity fetishism that relies on the apparent autonomy of an artwork and its aura? How can we devise other strategies to value art? The Trouble with Value highlights practices that bring us closer to understanding the potential of art to represent different notions of value in the contemporary, with particular focus on the role of language, modes of artwork’s dissemination and circulation, forms of iconoclasm and the value of artistic labour. The project attempts to locate artistic and institutional practices that offer viewpoints beyond the strategy of blending-in and conforming to the rules.

Curated by Kris Dittel (Onomatopee) and Krzysztof Siatka (Bunkier Sztuki)

Supported by The Mondriaan Funds and the Province of Noord-Brabant. Additionally the project received support from the Mondriaan Funds’ Experimental Regulation for fair artists’ wages. The participation of Grzywnowicz and Janczy is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Benera and Estefan’s participation was made possible with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute Brussels.

being as becoming integrates notions of “the contemporary” and aims to assert the added qualities of artistic production in our life. Does art liberate and/or should it be liberated? 

Devised by Onomatopee’s founding director Freek Lomme in association with Bus Projects director Channon Goodwin, being as becoming: liberating-art and/or liberating art is a vivid institutional collaboration between public gallery and publisher Onomatopee (NL) and artist-run space Bus Projects (AU). Both exhibitions will feature open-studio or residency-like situations, which will be documented in a logbook/diary of causes and consequences written by local critics who follow the artistic process and will be visually recorded and shown by means of a stop-motion camera. The artist will install themselves during the opening of the exhibition and de-install / pack during the finisage, stressing the ongoing dynamics of production and life throughout the show.
 
Fore-fronting the direct contact with our surroundings from within the artistic practice, this project will contest the moral legitimacy of the ethics of modernism in arts and culture, will economically contest the under the invisible hand of monetized artistic circulation, will contest the traditional autonomous viewpoint of artistic practice, and will discuss the liberal agenda of cultural civilization at large.

During both exhibitions visitors can engage in an ongoing on-site correspondence with critics/lecturers Sebastian Olma (writing from NL) and Johanna Drucker (writing from the US). Graphic design for the project will be delivered by Pierre Martin (FR); exhibition design by Dave Keune (NL).

Supported by The Mondriaan Funds and the Province of Noord-Brabant.