[5 August 2012, Hong Kong] - 10 Chancery Lane Gallery is excited to announce the first Hong Kong solo exhibition of Saigon and Los Angeles-based art collective The Propeller Group, The History of the Future, a 3-part multi-media project urging the viewers and the collectors to re-consider concepts of time, concepts of their own existence, and concepts of value within the context of present, past and future. The exhibition is open to public from 6th to 22nd September, 2012. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Central.
The project begins with a wooden sculpture of a phaser rifle, a prop adopted from a popular American science fiction television/film series, the Star Trek (TV series from 1966 to 2005; film series from 1979 to present). It is carved by hand following a traditional technique dating from the 16th century in Southeast Asia, giving the imagined science fiction weapon a more “alien” feel; something not of this world in both the historical sense and the science fiction sense. In a sense, it combines both the past and the future into one object.
This one-of-a-kind hand-carved sculpture is then used to create an intricate two-part mold, the exact fit contours the negative space of the wood carving. The collective’s intention is to create an anachronic archeological object. To do so they buried the rifle in order to hide it from human civilization somewhere in the world, only to be revealed in 100 years, thus making it into an antique. The History of the Future challenges our notions of object ownership and value, which increases with age.
The exhibition will include a video showing a series of packshots or product shots of the sculptural object, inter-cut with a short documentary narrative of the artists’ journey to an unknown location to bury the sculpture, along with the mold and a safe with the coordinates of the location of the buried rifle that can only be opened in 100 years when all participants, artists and owners will be dead and will have to pass it on to their descendants for the future to find.
THE PROPELLER GROUP (TPG) is an art collective formed in 2006 and currently based in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam and Los Angeles, USA. It is comprised of Phunam (b. 1974 in Saigon, Viet Nam), Matt Lucero (b. 1976 in Upland, CA, U.S.A) and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976 1976 in Saigon, Viet Nam). TPG works with international artists focused on developing original, creative content, from quirky online viral video campaigns, to art installations, to large-scale film production and everything in between. The collective helps to realize collaborative statements that re-define the social and political understanding of contemporary sub-cultures and popular cultures. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, New York, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Singapore Biennial, Singapore, Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai among others.