Hong-Kong

Worthless scrap metal, ceaseless movement and a childlike delight in fun and games are the main components that determine Jean Tinguely’s artistic oeuvre. Originally from Fribourg in Switzerland, he moved to Paris in 1953, and it was here that he found his preferred artistic medium of kinetics. On the one hand, Tinguely’s constructions, composed of found objects and set in motion by motors, express their creator’s fascination with the achievements of the art of engineering. On the other hand, however, since his witty and bizarre machines create nothing other than cacophonous noises and fleeting impressions, they simultaneously reverse the modern idea of functionality and productivity to create the opposite. With his constantly moving but ultimately useless machines, the Swiss artist held up a mirror to post-war society, which was prospering economically but remained static in its value systems, in two different ways. His creations are at once a rejection of outdated social norms and a critique of blind faith in progress. Whereas the early objects are generally driven by coincidence, and function in a jerky manner, beginning in the early 1960s, the obsessive “searcher of things” crafted machines that are caught in endless motion. »Hong Kong« belongs to this category of objects condemned to repeat the same activity eternally like Sisyphus; it was given its title following one of the artist’s sojourns in the Asian metropolis. As is the case with other constructions developed by Tinguely at this time, even the individual components of this roughly human-size object created in 1963 are executed in homogenous black. By setting »Hong Kong« in motion with the use of a foot pedal, the visitor becomes an accomplice of the artist. A large snail-like spiral initially begins to turn above a wok that is held in place by a metal hoop. When an angle iron is then made to slide across one of the rims of the power unit, an infernal noise is created that suddenly shatters the convention of silence in museums.