BEYOND BOUNDARIES Globalisation and Identity

My selection of 30 works features pieces from my collection under the theme of Beyond Boundaries— Globalisation and Identity. It was in the year 2000, when I began collecting while simultaneously acquiring more knowledge on the matters of art and art collecting. The more my knowledge deepened, the more my passion for the arts grew beyond the point of no return.

Initially, I collected mostly paintings and sculptures, the painting by Tegun Ostenrick is representative of the genre I collected at the time. However, after reading many art books, I came to the understanding that contemporary art knows of no boundaries in its use of material. So I started to look beyond paintings and sculptures, and began to procure Video Art, Video Mapping, Contemporary Photography, Performance Art, Scanography, Sound Art, Light Art, Installation, Pixel Art, Computer generated images, Bio Art and works made of various mixed media, the so called Intermedia Art. Therefore, this exhibition highlights non-medium specific artworks.

Gradually, I stopped procuring aesthetically pleasing works altogether. Instead, I began to focus on artworks based around the context of globalization and identity. Perhaps my affinity to such themes is because I consider myself a Third Culture Kid, my parents left China after second World War, they sought refuge in Indonesia where I was born stateless. I moved to West Berlin at a young age, where I styed for 20 years and it was at the Bauhaus where I fell in love with architecture and art. My way of thinking and the way I collect art is greatly affected by the friends I made during my time there. The works by Tintin Wulia, Ming Wong, Erika Ernawan, Jim Abel, Zhang Huan, Natascha Abigali and Erwin Olaf are some good examples.

One of the major questions I ask myself before deciding to add an artwork to my collection is whether the artist’s work reflects the Zeitgeist (the spirit of our time). For it is my opinion that a good work of art should contribute to the overall visual reflection of an era. I postulate that the future will consider the beginning of the 21st century as a time when globalization changed our lives in its entirety as well as how questions of personal and cultural identity have become crucial points of consideration. Furthermore, the rapid development of technology accelerated be the invention of computers and the internet as well as the discovery of DNA are only some but iconic signals that mark our time.

Foto: © Liechtenstein National Museum