Sneakerotics

"As an exhibition, this proposal derives in part from the theoretical treatise “Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl” authorized by the radical French collective Tiqqun. Although this text was originally intended to function as something of an analytical manifesto of the subjectification of the post-postmodern consumer, in reality it is perhaps most useful as a series of poetic statements that romanticize the position of the young-girl as much as they critique it: “The young-girl resembles her photo.” “The tomboy is indispensable as a kind of modernity.” “Youth and Femininity, hypostatised, abstract, and recoded into youthitude and feminitude, are then elevated to the rank of ideal regulators of empire-citizen integration, and the figure of the Young-Girl thus realises an immediate, spontaneous, and perfectly desirable unity between those two variables.” If nothing else, Los Angeles and Hong Kong are perhaps the two hemispheric poles of this culture, and the gyms are their temples."
- Exhibition Statement from Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, Curated by Robin Peckham