Urtica: VALUE QUEST / ART OF WELFARE AND ECONOMY OF RISK

Exhibition Value Quest – Art of Welfare and Economy of Risk is a kind of search for value that, through the prism of Games of Chance and Business Strategies and their economic trends, poses the question: What is value?

In what form does value appear, speak of social-economic circumstances, of relations between the individual and society? Through analysis of its artistic activity in the period 1999–2000 and use of Monetary symbolic forms, Urtica refers to various aspects of the notion of value in the framework of the social-economic system. This is a chaotic and non-linear system, represented as Roulette, in which the choice of strategies like Fight or Retreat, Risk or Safety, means Loss as much as it means Gain.

The exhibited artworks combine traditional artistic techniques and digital technology. Intertwining of virtual and material contents introduces the notion of object fetishism, which problematizes the relation between an object’s material value and its intangible artistic value.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” wrote Oscar Wild in the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in the remote 1890. However, the question WHAT IS VALU(able)E? remains open. Towards which social, ethical, ideological or aesthetical values do we strive today?

(Urtica)

VALUE QUEST / ART OF WELFARE AND ECONOMY OF RISK
Künstler: Urtica  (Violeta Vojvodic-Balaz / Eduard Balaz)
Kurator: Zoran Eric

Ort: Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art