Kongkee

More people have begun discussing the financialization of the art market, especially in a place like Hong Kong, where capital and geopolitical issues are both highly concentrated. In the curated sector of Art Basel Hong Kong, artist Kongkee’s neon installation Price or Value is a response to this topic. The artist states that the buyer must choose one of the two neon words, “Price” or “Value,” after which the artist will smash the remaining one; the broken neon remnants will also become part of the work.

The piece resembles a live morality play performed by the collector and the artist. Its final “plot” arrives at an upbeat ending grounded in traditional cultural values: “Price” is eliminated while “Value” is preserved, implying that value is eternal. Of course, regardless of whether the collector truly cares more about value, the work forces a binary interrogation of price versus value. Pulled apart and assessed separately from within “art” itself, this becomes another on-site experiment: the classical artistic subject disappears, and reality opts for technical metrics, rewriting the annotation of art’s essence through more material and quantifiable means.