The St. Petersburg Paradox, installation view, Swiss Institute. (from left to right) Sarah Ortmeyer. SANKT PETERSBURG PARADOX, 2014; marble chessboards, copper, iron, brass, and aluminum chess tables, natural ostrich, rhea, goose, chicken, mallard, quail, emu, and duck eggs, artificial marble obsidian, alabaster, and onyx eggs; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv. Tabor Robak. A*, 2014; 14-channel HD video; 9:46. Courtesy of the Artist and team (gallery, inc.). John Miller. Labyrinth I, 1999; acrylic on canvas with sound component; 54 x 70 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York. Kaspar Müller. Tropic of Cancer, 2014; laser prints on A3 paper; each 12 x 15 ½ in. Courtesy Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, and Federico Vavassori, Milan. Cayetano Ferrer. Remnant Recomposition, 2014; carpet remnants, seam tape; 18 x 60 ft. Courtesy of the Artist.

The St. Petersburg Paradox courts the aesthetic of the crapshoot table. The main gallery floor is divided into two sections by a half wall painted the dark forest green of a billiards table. Behind the wall, blocked off like the VIP section of a gambling hall, is a platform area upholstered with Cayetano Ferrer’s Remnant Recomposition, a patchwork of casino-floor carpet samples whose clashing patterns abrasively hum. One almost hallucinates the stale cigar smoke of the parlor, the flash of card sharks’ green visors. Also on the main floor, Sarah Ortmeyer’s elegant installation SANKT PETERSBURG PARADOX creates a delicate maze of upended marble chessboards and tables, upon which onyx, obsidian, alabaster, and actual bird eggs precariously rest. The work impresses upon viewers the fragility of chance.

The exhibition romances the poetics of the gamble as well. For Bad Faith (1994), Douglas Gordon wagered his entire allotted budget for an upcoming exhibition on whether or not it would snow in Stuttgart on the upcoming Christmas Day. Underneath the wall text of Gordon’s poetic letter detailing the bet, two television sets feature analog video of solitary windows overlooking the blue dusk of Stuttgart streets on Christmas Eve, capturing the final hours in which Gordon’s wager would be won or lost. These tense vistas expose the sentimental side of gambling. Looking through these melancholic windows, we are held aloft in the purgatory of hoping, in an elongation of that crucial moment when the dice are still in midair. It seems it may snow any minute in Stuttgart, 1994, but it does not.

Ericka Beckman’s brilliant and terrifying video YOU THE BETTER, installed in the Swiss Institute’s basement, approaches the “game” as a philosophical concept that resists logic and is prone to turn hauntingly absurd. Viewers must pass through an ominous black doorway and round the bend of a brick-lined hallway illuminated in dark blue to access the thirty-minute video, which depicts a single team inscrutably battling what seems to be an imaginary opponent in a repetitive, basketball-like game with ridiculous rules. Unseen cheerleaders encourage the team of five as they compete against no one in the dark gym: “Don’t Surrender! Don’t Stop! Get that ball right over the top!” In Samuel Beckett’s existentialist masterpiece Endgame, characters in a displaced room circle round each other like the last few chess pieces on the board, their speech unraveling into empty cliché. A similarly desperate sense of futility pervades Beckman’s desolate gym. Beckman’s video presents a horror situation in which arbitrary rules possess cosmic significance, and the repetitive throwing of the ball becomes a desperate attempt to uncover what this meaning might be. Perhaps hell is having to play the same game over and over again.

Ericka Beckman. YOU THE BETTER, 1983; HD video from 16mm; 30:00. Produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

In cheery opposition to the mortal gloom of the basement, Tabor Robak’s A* shimmers on the gallery’s main floor. A carbuncle of fourteen massive HD video screens combined to display a stunning composite image, A* demos a series of animated, mobile-phone-style games characterized by flashy graphics and a series of perpetually good-natured wins and losses. A* is a shrine to the mindless variety of digital gaming. The stakes are low; these mesmerizing puzzles, here displayed at an almost religiously large scale, might be played forever without risk of material loss.

Whether or not we should “take the game seriously” is another paradox this exhibition presents. At the threshold of the main gallery, Giovanni Anselmo’s untitled work, an Arte Povera masterpiece from 1968, taunts viewers with a looming, if presently neutralized, terror. While the constituent concrete slabs may at first appear innocuous, the stones are in fact hugged by two fraying, live electrical wires only just too distant from one another to connect. The dormant stone and its potential electrical threat stand as a warning of a risk we may not take seriously—but perhaps we should.

Often drawing more attention to its curatorial frame and philosophical underpinnings than to the works that compose it, The St. Petersburg Paradox positions itself as omnipotent casino—a haunting maze of chances taken, some trivial, some fatal. The exhibition’s pieces are positioned like a series of strategic moves, provocatively elucidating the presented theme. In this show, the house most certainly wins.

The St. Petersburg Paradox is on view at Swiss Institute through August 17. Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster Street, New York City, 10013.

Michael Craig-Martin, An Oak Tree, assorted objects and printed text under glass, glass on shelf. 15 × 46 × 14 cm. 1973. Collection: National Gallery of Australia.

About the theme, as curator Jiang Jiehong said, “The Unseen is the main framework for this themed exhibition, and not a topic that it needs to revolve around. Under limited visual experience, projecting expectations that would exceed natural perceptive experience”

This themed exhibition is made up of three sections – with Guangdong Museum of Art as the main venue together with special project “Grandview Project” and the performances at the Guangzhou Opera House. The main venue is a traditional exhibition venue, every piece of work is a sense, “observing” some kind of explanation and illumination around the theme, the space seem to be in a temperate manner, contrived.

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, installation. Dimensions variable. 2006.

Giovanni Anselmo, For an Incision in an Indefinite Number of Thousands of Years, iron, rust preventive, wall inscription. 1969.

The Grandview Mall is a large general shopping center that everyone in Guangzhou is familiar with. All works presented do not have any description or label, “lurking” in the public spaces, which once again, highlight the issue of which is between the artist and the audience, between art and the public space.

Below are some thoughts expressed by the general public.

Passerby 1 - Middle-aged female customer: No, no idea what that is, don’t feel much about it.

Passerby 2 - Young male customer: (Next to Date and Left Right Left) why is there so many of these February 28^th? And these lights. Is it meant to turn this place into some sort of city landscape? This is a theme, right? (Blushes) And so it can’t leave. The city itself is a work of art. (If you weren’t told that this is a work of art) I think it’s cool. (About this lurking display) Also quite good, but you must really pay attention.

TOF Group, Aiolos, interactive installation. 2012.

Passerby 3 – general media worker: (facing Aiolos) This must be some kind of sales technique. I don’t think it’s art, I’ve done something like this in the studio. Some much absurdity in contemporary art, if the message is too clear it wouldn’t be contemporary art.

Passerby 4 – McDonalds employee: (About I’m lovin’ It) I’m sorry, we can’t answer your questions.

Passerby 5 – Male customer: (Real Estate 24-hour Elevator Scence) To see this in this kind of busy city is rare, very calming, contemporary. Not that I really understand it, it’s just a feeling I guess.

Passerby 6 – Female customer: I like it a lot, to see something new. I will pay attention, would like to look for similar kind of works. It’s elegant here, the only thing that I don’t really like is that there’re too many McDonald signs. The 2013 next to that is way too big, doesn’t look good in photos. What are your thoughts behind the theme? It should really stand out in the crowd, “The Unseen” shouldn’t be so eye-catching.

Passerby 7 – Female: (Near Never Forever) I saw this and I thought it’s a sign from the installation, probably got something to with how insensitive I am with this kind of things, it honestly didn’t cross my mind that it was a work of art.

Passerby 8 – Student of journalism: Don’t ask me, I don’t get this sort of thing.

Passerby 9 – Young shopkeeper: Is it that McDonalds is going out of business on February 28^th 2013? It looks like an ad, but not really, many customers asked me about it. Can’t really imagine it being an art work… If I weren’t an employee here and I see this sign outside the mall I’d come in to check it out as well, but I wouldn’t know where to ask about it.

Passerby 10 – Worker in the mall: (Facing Throwing Exercise, Turning and Property) That guy throwing over there is so stupid. I think that bike looks like an art work, looks like its about to burst out, I really want to yank it down and ride off with it. It’s interesting that they’d appear here. I’d like to look around for the others in the mall, but I’ve got to go to work, if it’s art I guess I’ll spend more time looking.

Passerby 11 – Cleaner: This is a prop for taking photos isn’t it.

MadeIn Company, Safe House, installation. Dimensions variable. 2012.

Passerby 12 – (Next to Safe House) Toy isn’t it? An Event in the mall? Don’t think it’s art.

It is apparent that art works at the venue have faded into the environment by going unnoticed. Especially in an environment where concentration is rapidly shifted, the “borderline” is hard to grasp, there is a sense of uncertainty and doubt, which again draws us back to the An Oak Tree – “What precisely is the artwork? That glass of water?”

As a journalist, a writer who communicates with the audience, being a communicative media, has inevitably become part of the exhibition.

John Cage, 4' 33'', Played by Du Yun.

The Guangdong Opera House is the venue focused on performance. There was a one-off performance on the second day of the opening ceremony especially for the guests and media. In the first scene, artist Du Yun reenacted John Cage’s 4’33”, just as the title of the “song” implies, she sat in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds; “performed” Katie Paterson’s Earth-Moon-Earth on the piano, echoing the gramophone that the artist had placed in the main exhibition hall. The performance of Run by Du Yun and Claire Chase is emotionally charged, powerful. The work by artist group TASHWEESH of “the temporary resonating spaces related to spatial politics, subjectivity, narrative and reality, imagination and memories” is vivid, accompanied by an intense soundtrack and lasted for 40 minutes. Boikutt’s soft singing on the side makes this piece of work seem even more organic, rich and more imbued with the environment.