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Selected Works

 Tromarama Soliloquy

Tromarama

Soliloquy

2018

Lamps, software, social media, #kinship


Variable size

Press Release

Edouard Malingue Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Condo New York 2019 hosted by Petzel Gallery. Presented are works by Chou Yu-Cheng (b. 1976, Taiwan) and Tromarama (est. 2006, Indonesia).

Chou Yu-Cheng’s practice builds, across multiple mediums, a subtle critique of mass media, institutions and the mechanisms that produce them. A graduate from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and the research programme La Seine, Chou has gained international recognition for his dialectical interplay between the source and results of his creations. Through his selective conversations, Chou shapes a minimal yet deliberate set of intellectual and aesthetic tricks, which ultimately play on the properties of art, object and space. On display are a series of gradient paintings, fastidiously created by hand, resembling in their pastel hues an ephemeral skyline. By playing with varying borders, Chou seems to create windows of observance.

Chou Yu-Cheng is a highly acclaimed artist who lives and works in Taipei. Notable shows include Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila (2018); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2015); Kaohsiung Fine Art Museum, Kaohsiung (2015); New Museum, New York (2015); Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taipei (2014); Queens Museum, New York (2013); Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado (2008). Chou held a residency at the Chinese Centre For Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Manchester in 2013 and received the Taipei Art Award, Taiwan in 2012 as well as the Taishin Annual Visual Art Award, Taiwan in 2011. Chou’s work is held in multiple museum collections including the University of Salford/CFCCA, UK; Taipei Fine Art Museum; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art.

Engaging with the notion of hyperreality in the digital age, Tromarama explores the interrelationship between the virtual and the physical world. Initiating as a collective in 2006 in Bandung, Indonesia, Febie Babyrose, Ruddy Hatumena and Herbert Hans create works that combine video, installation, computer programming and public participation depicting the influence of digital media on society’s perception of its surroundings. Tromarama’s body of work extends to video, installation, computer programming and participation. At the heart of their practice is the creation of narratives, the ones that can and could exist within our physical and digital worlds, but perhaps more crucially, those that exist when the two are fused. The major work in this exhibition, ‘Soliloquy’ (2018), is an example of Tromarama’s inventive response to the Internet and social media, collating user activity on Twitter to reconfigure 96 secondhand lamps: each time “#kinship” is used, the tweet is converted into a binary code, prompting the lamps to flicker.

Tromarama are widely considered one of Indonesia’s most exciting rising talents and have been exhibited around the world. They have held solo exhibitions at Centre A, Vancouver (2017); Liverpool Biennial Fringe, Liverpool (2016); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2015); and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010) among other locations. Their group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila (2018); Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2017); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2016); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2015); Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2014); and the 7th Asia Pacifc Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2012).