Babak Golkar
In No Particular Hurry
September 15–October 29, 2016
Sabrina Amrani Gallery
Calle Madera, 23
28004 Madrid
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Sabrina Amrani is pleased to present In No Particular Hurry, the first solo exhibition in Spain by Canadian artist Babak Golkar. This exhibition features a series of new sculptural assemblages titled “Time Capsules (2016–2116).”
Golkar’s latest body of work—composed of taxidermy, ceramics, 3D printed ABS, among other materials—questions the notions of value creation and the role of the artist in governing these systems. Through the artist’s use of time as a key connecting material, all works unpack dominant geo-political issues that have emerged through his close engagement with each object and their associated histories. For the project Golkar bracketed roughly 200 years in researching materials and their processes; experiences and conditions from the last hundred years and how they have affected us and will continue to do so.
Varying in scale and form, each work in “Time Capsules” contains a concealed artwork unknown to anyone but the artist. It is ill-advised to unveil their interiors until the suggested time has passed, inevitably outliving the artist and those who initially acquire the work. If any capsule opens prior to the passing of 100 years, the artworks become void and their economic value drops to zero by way of a written agreement between Golkar and the collector. It is only at this threshold that the objects fully manifest themselves, becoming anew in 2116.
Golkar describes “Time Capsules” as a way to further consider the practice of photography and its limitations. He states: “Photography is a form of preserving time—denoting a certain subject but also what it is not there. There is a frame that plays with both a concealment and exposure. I am often unresolved with photography and perhaps the capsules make for a more complicated simultaneity of pseudo-presence and tokens of absence. The difference here lies in the potency of what is entrapped within the capsules. In Time Capsules art transpires in the space between the container and the contained.”
Through these considerations of valuation one returns to a historical perspective of the avant-garde not only through associations made between these works and the readymade, but also in thinking of art and agency. In Marcel Duchamp’s 1957 text The Creative Act, he outlines a power within the viewer to define the weight of art, on an aesthetic scale, through their subjective engagement. He outlines that an object’s participation with the public delineates its social value, perhaps initially outside an economic system. In the case of Golkar’s “Time Capsules,” the objects are made with an added system of value regulation in mind. By doing so, the artist gains a power to uphold specific formal and conceptual intentions in the face of an increasingly nebulous audience and market.
Just as Golkar’s process of renewal speaks to destructive and immaterial gestures within key historical works of art, marketing terms are equally relevant here: one could say that a single acquisition produces two artworks (quite literally two for the price of one). This prompts an additional nod to a 20th century avant-garde in thinking of art as a larger social tool for challenging moral and economic ideologies through works that demonstrate both playfulness and critique. This proposal underlines how the use of time assists to build more complicated relationships with art and objects, affording us to fundamentally question what influences us to collect, conceal or attribute value.
In No Particular Hurry is part of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend.
A selection of works from the “Time Capsules (2016–2116)” series will also be showcased by Sabrina Amrani in a solo presentation of the artist at Artissima 2016, Turin.
Read more about In No Particular Hurry
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