Zachary Formwalt: Three Exchanges

Zachary Formwalt –Three Exchanges

Salon of the MoCAB
February 6 – March 22, 2015

This solo exhibition is a result of collaboration between Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.

Curators: Jelle Bouwhuis (SMBA) and Zoran Erić (MoCAB). 

Conversation with artist and guided tour: Saturday, 7 February at 1pm at the MoCAB Salon.

In the oldest of his three installations, Unsupported Transit (2011), Formwalt concentrates on the construction site and the construction work on the outside of the new stock exchange in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, designed by Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Shenzen has a special status as an economic zone where the authorities allow the system of the free market to run its course. The video diptych In Light of the Arc (2013) registers the materialization of the same stock exchange, which is paradoxically marked by an increasing abstraction. Since the stock trade is now entirely under control of information technology and advanced algorithms, the trade floor itself with its iconic golden bell now serves only a ceremonial purpose. In the third installation, An Unknown Quantity realized this year, Formwalt turns the camera to H.P. Berlage's stock exchange in Amsterdam opened in 1903. How could Berlage, known for socialist driven housing solutions for Amsterdam's working class, match his idealism with the commission of designing this palace of capitalism?

Formwalt's work has become specifically topical due to the worldwide credit crisis of 2007 and the impact of finance and the mechanics of financial capitalism on our economies and our social life. An important and recurrent concern in Formwalt's work is that material outcomes of economic and social processes, such as architectural constructions, can be captured and visualized, but the very financial processes underlying this outcome remain elusive. His photography and especially video work does not rely on images alone, but is usually accompanied with a voice-over, to deal in a substantial way with the complex entanglements of history, capitalism and image making. By juxtaposing images and sounds, Formwalt demonstrates that history, in some ways similar to financial transactions, appears to be insubstantial, almost transparent, despite the fact that various consequences can be observed through the lens.

Zachary Formwalt (1979, Georgia, U.S.A.) studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. In 2008 and 2009 he was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. He has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle in Basel (2009), ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum in Bolzano (2011), Casco—Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht (2010) and Kiosk, Ghent (2013). He has participated in group exhibitions such as 'Monumentalism' at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2010), 'End of Money' in Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011), 'Homo Economicus' at Cabinet Gallery, London (2012) and in Steirischer Herbst, Graz: 'Liquid Assets' (2013). His work is held by several institutional collections, such as the Netherlands Photo Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Zachary Formwalt –Three Exchanges is the third exhibition in the series of the Stedelijk Museum's Global Collaborations programme.

Before coming to MoCAB the exhibition “Three Exchanges” was presented at SMBA (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam) with which our museum established institutional cooperation and exchange in the framework of the programme “Global Collaborations”. After the exhibition by Zachary Formwalt in Belgrade, works by two artists from Serbia, Vladimir Miladinović and Nikola Radić Lucati, will be presented at the exhibition at SMBA starting from April 18, 2015.

The exhibition will run from March 22 in the Salon of the MoCAB in 14 Pariska St., every working day from 12:00 to 20:00, except Tuesdays. 

The project is supported by Mondriaan Fund and Stichtung Ammodo.