HVCCA: Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art

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Peekskill, NY 10566

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LONG-TERM INSTALLATIONS

Serge Onne: Planetariummonetarium, 2009

August 2009-TBA, Riverfront Green, Peekskill
Double Dutch, 2009-2010 Exhibition

Serge Onne
Planetariummonetarium, 2009
Steel, coins, pvc, paint and drawings on plastic
Courtesy of the artist

In Planetariummonetarium, the work on show by Serge Onnen, a variant is staged: what we are is heavily influenced by the ways in which we are able to gather information from the things we see. His Peekskill Planetariummonetarium is a small sphere filled with 13 kaleidoscopes and hundreds of small coins from around the world. ‘An intimate inner-space on the wide shores of the Hudson river,’ he writes. ‘The visitor enters the sphere and peers through the kaleidoscopes. He’s free to turn them and to manipulate the kaleidoscopes that are filled with small drawings.’

This work, however, is not an ordinary planetarium: it is not aimed at the solar system but at the monetary system. Studying the movements of the planets, looking at the direct surroundings of the earth, is a way of trying to predict the future. There used to be a time when life on this planet was ruled by the division between night and day, between light and dark, between sun and rain, between the sun and the moon. Today, Onnen seems to argue, it is money that rules the world: financial flows, currents of monetary power. Planetariummonetarium seems to prepare mankind for the dream in which it is still possible to define one’s position on earth.

--Excerpt from Christophe Van Gerrewey’s essay Is it a language that you speak?, “Double Dutch” exhibition catalogue.

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