In an age of financialization, notions of value are increasingly abstracted, constructed from algorithmic equations as opposed to distinct processes or materials. As Franco “Bifo” Berardi writes succinctly of our era: “monetary value produces more monetary value without being realized through the production of goods.” This observation indicates a departure from the objects through which capital has traditionally been conducted. In the heart of Hong Kong’s business sector, where the wheels of multinational corporations churn alongside luxury boutiques, Edouard Malingue Gallery’s exhibition “Clamour Can Melt Gold” looks to gold, a medium that is at once anachronistic and foundational to current conceptions of value. Taking its title from a Chinese proverb popularized by the country’s forefather Sun Yat-sen, “Clamour Can Melt Gold” suggests an aspirational fervor that speaks to the power of the masses against great obstacles and also, perhaps inadvertently, to the mutability and porousness of that which has an established value. Following this sentiment, in the exhibition, gold is attended to as both a highly coveted, symbolic, and fetishized object as well as a tool of exploitation and power. Easing the viewer into the subject, Hong Kong artist Sarah Lai’s Styling Index (2015) examines the visual rhetoric of ubiquitous high-end jewelry …