Just before this Christmas 2023, the Catalyst gallery will be plumbed and fitted with functional urinals and repurposed as a public lavatory to honour R. Mutt, an alter-ego of the visionary and prominent artist Marcel Duchamp, and pay tribute to one of his greatest ready-made p(i)e(c)es, Fountain, the non-art ‘thing’ that was once nihilistically placed on a plinth more than a century ago, returning to Caesar what was once Caesar’s.

Marcel Duchamp’s act with Fountain was performed at a critical juncture in the evolutionary context of the troubled avant-garde, the arrival of Dadaism and its subsequent bastardisation into postmodernity, as well as simply being a revolutionary act and a cynical gesture, but nevertheless a true statement and reflection in regards to the shameless commercialisation (to the point of corruption) of the art market at the time. We are now finding ourselves once again in the same scenario at this cultural turning point, where the uncertainty of the path ahead, in relation to Duchamp’s critique and sentiment a century ago mirrors and echoes our very own state of (non)existence, ringing even truer and louder in today’s lacklustre art world.

Gallery address: G/F, No.2 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan