The Works：David Bowie's art collection, G. Roland Biermann's photographic work, artist Wang Du's con

One of the things that made the work of the late great musician David Bowie so significant was that he was so well attuned to what was going on in so many cultural areas: theatre, mime, painting, fashion, literature, and more. And he was an avid collector: “Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own,” he once said. Bowie collected hundreds of paintings, sculptures and iconic pieces of furniture during his lifetime. Not much was known about the full extent of his collection until recently, when many items went on show in London prior to an upcoming November auction of more than 350 pieces. Last week, 35 of them came to Hong Kong.
London-based German photographer G. Roland Biermann works with a variety of media, combining photography, film, sculpture and installation to create new forms. Galerie du Monde is currently presenting a solo exhibition of his work that consists of monochrome photographs from his “Apparition” and “snow + concrete” series, as well as his 2004 video work White Cube / White Wall. Here’s a taster.
As is well known, Hong Kong is one of the least consumerist and capitalist places on the planet. We’re kidding of course.
There’s no doubt that the desire to consume, and to raise the capital to keep doing do, plays too big a part in too many of our lives for our own good. We live in a society where consumption is a way of life. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of factories, well over 100 years ago economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen was already wittily criticizing our desire to consume. Chinese artist Wang Du continues both the wit and the critique, as you can see in his current exhibiton, “Post-Fetishism”. His central point is that our obsession with material goods has confused us in our basic values regarding people, objects, society, and education.
Local audiences have long loved tango music and tango dance. The art form originated in Argentina and Uruguay and ranges from the most popular of songs by the likes of Carlos Gardel to the sometimes more challenging pieces of Astor Piazzolla. With us in the studio now is a group of musicians from Hong Kong and Taiwan, to tell us what it means to them.