Ghislaine Leung

Renaissance Society Edition, 2025

An object that did not become an artwork in Ghislaine Leung’s Renaissance Society exhibition.

Edition of 12

$1,000

This limited edition by Ghislaine Leung consists of various objects that trail in the wake of her solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 2024. Leung’s show at the Ren consisted of a set of new “scores”: concise phrases, written by the artist, that describe the materials and implementation of a given work, which the institution then interprets and enacts on site. While developing her shows, Leung often starts with a much larger set of scores that change and coalesce over time. Leung has referred to her practice as subtractive, a permissive system that is by nature inefficient; everything is brought in and then much removed. As part of this editorial process, Leung and the Ren started acquiring materials for far more works than were presented, amassing an array of items that were never used. These surplus items hint at other forms the show might have taken: motion sensors, prairie dresses, glow-in-the-dark paint, a handmade doll, a microphone, a radio, two versions of an institutional “inventory.” Becoming an artist's edition, they attest to Leung’s continued attempt to achieve more sustainable practices, inverting value systems around objects and labor that are often considered secondary. The objects that constitute the Renaissance Society Edition are traces of works that didn't happen—but perhaps more importantly are also traces of unseen working that did. Together, they begin to tell an alternate history of her exhibition at the Ren.