Work
Post Capitalistic Auction
A performative and binding auction in which artworks are acquired through Money, Opportunity, Understanding, and Exchange.
4
Editions
4
Cities
3
Continents
2018-2024
Operative Period
Bergen · Yokohama · Toronto · Hong Kong
Across four editions, the same operative structure has been restaged within different artistic and institutional contexts.
Post Capitalistic Auction is a performative and real art auction in which bidders make binding offers through Money, Opportunity, Understanding, and Exchange. The artist selects the winning bid, while an advisory panel publicly examines its meaning, credibility, and risk.
Format
Live performative auction, preview exhibition, panel discussion
Post Capitalistic Auction is a long-term performance project and an actual alternative art auction that examines how value is produced, negotiated, and exchanged beyond monetary price. Developed since 2018, the work transforms the auction from a market mechanism into a live framework for testing plural systems of value.
Artists, artworks, bids, transactions, and contracts are all real. Participants bid through four distinct and non-commensurable bidding currencies: Money, Opportunity, Understanding, and Exchange. All offers are submitted through specially designed software, and artists personally decide who receives their works. A panel representing different positions within the art ecology participates in the event, creating dialogue and confrontation among competing systems of legitimacy and value.
Each edition is developed in close collaboration with local artists, curators, programmers, auctioneers, and institutions. While maintaining a shared set of operative rules, the project evolves through different cultural contexts and art ecosystems, functioning as both an artistic work and a comparative inquiry into the social life of value. Since its premiere in Bergen, it has been presented in Yokohama, Toronto, and Hong Kong, continually absorbing and reflecting transformations within the contemporary art world.
Operative Elements
- Plural bidding currencies
- Binding value commitments
- Public articulation of non-monetary bids
- Advisory perspectives
- Artist-held decision authority
- Contractual consequence
- A comparative record across four editions
Catalogues
Bergen edition, 2018
available on request for researchers and presenters
Yokohama edition, 2019
available on request for researchers and presenters
Toronto edition, 2022
available on request for researchers and presenters
Hong Kong edition, 2024
available on request for researchers and presenters
Documentation Gallery
Related Labs
Related Research & Writing
Why Does Money Decide Everything?
The preface to PCA's Bergen premiere edition, tracing the question of why money decides artistic value.
Money, Algorithms, and the Question of Value
An early text tracing the conceptual origin of Post Capitalistic Auction through money, algorithms, art markets, and value systems beyond price.
Auction 3.0
The preface to PCA's Toronto edition, written after the pandemic, NFTs, and the crypto crash.
Applauding the Price, Not the Picasso
The preface to PCA's Hong Kong edition, written as the art market reached a turning point.
A Conversation on Value and Art
An interview with Jingyi Wang on the conceptual ground and bidding currencies of Post Capitalistic Auction.
Asbjørn Grønstad on JUDGE ME and Post Capitalistic Auction
A synthesis of Grønstad’s reading of JUDGE ME and Post Capitalistic Auction in relation to neoliberalism, justice, artistic labour, and value.
On the Documentary, the Aura and the Emergency Incident of an Art Auction
A scholarly catalogue text by Knut Ove Arntzen situating Post Capitalistic Auction within debates on authenticity, aura, simulacrum, hyperreality, and the commodification of art.
Post Capitalistic Auction as Contemporary Art
A critical essay situating Post Capitalistic Auction within contemporary art, artistic value, exchange, and the shift from objects to experiences.