Friday, 31 October 2014
Thursday, 23 October 2014
Friday, 17 October 2014
Gordon Shrigley: Heaven’s Gate
Gordon Shrigley
Heaven’s Gate
IMT Gallery
The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907 – 2012) once said something along these lines: for me beauty is valued more than anything – the beauty that is manifest in a curved line or in an act of creativity. It is on the sensual and liberated curves that we perceive life’s soundscape, not on straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man.
Some time ago in a passionate conversation about religion and deliberate choices, while dinning at a restaurant lost in the midst of the countryside, someone (non-European) expressed that the previous Pope, Benedict XVI, was a Nazi, because he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth. However, this idea clearly aroused the indignation of almost all of the people at the table not for religion’ or political’ reasons, but, instead, for a lack of cultural knowledge and understanding and it was also obnoxious how people from a particular region in the world perceive the history of the world and cultural difference. Most of the people at the table, under 50-years-old, were from European countries that until the 1970s had been under a fascist regime, and perceived that commentary as a rude vision on how other people might perceive world history and bring their local different perceptions of the world.
Life is made of curves, not of straights lines, and when Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth, in 1941, membership was require by law for all 14-years-old German boys after March 1939. Being part of a nationalist youth organization, until the 1970s, is like, presently, all of us having to have an email account and a mobile phone, even if not required by law, or we like it or wanted it or not! It is demanded by society at large.
The dissemination of totalitarian ideologies, believes and modes of behavior led by the propagation machine in the XX century, is, today, communicated by those informational channels being demanded by society. Non-places where the political corrects breeds! For the matter, it would be useful to think about which images circulate by and in the social sphere! So, my point here is that if what he had seen is that straight line (and imperialist view imposed over the world multitude), what curves given us by is what goes beyond over those fatalistic imagery conditions defining Democracy, State, Freedom, Islam, Terrorism, etc.
It is on those moments that sound start to emerge. I’m thinking about Gordon Shrigley work (presently at IMT Gallery in London) Heaven’s Gate comprising 14 slabs of straight small lines of chalk on painted board as musical compositions. An endless vocabulary of things describing that that was and is around us, with each slab resonating different soundscapes and compositions. It sprouts from the most inconvenient places and moments.
Heaven’s Gate
IMT Gallery
Some time ago in a passionate conversation about religion and deliberate choices, while dinning at a restaurant lost in the midst of the countryside, someone (non-European) expressed that the previous Pope, Benedict XVI, was a Nazi, because he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth. However, this idea clearly aroused the indignation of almost all of the people at the table not for religion’ or political’ reasons, but, instead, for a lack of cultural knowledge and understanding and it was also obnoxious how people from a particular region in the world perceive the history of the world and cultural difference. Most of the people at the table, under 50-years-old, were from European countries that until the 1970s had been under a fascist regime, and perceived that commentary as a rude vision on how other people might perceive world history and bring their local different perceptions of the world.
Life is made of curves, not of straights lines, and when Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth, in 1941, membership was require by law for all 14-years-old German boys after March 1939. Being part of a nationalist youth organization, until the 1970s, is like, presently, all of us having to have an email account and a mobile phone, even if not required by law, or we like it or wanted it or not! It is demanded by society at large.
The dissemination of totalitarian ideologies, believes and modes of behavior led by the propagation machine in the XX century, is, today, communicated by those informational channels being demanded by society. Non-places where the political corrects breeds! For the matter, it would be useful to think about which images circulate by and in the social sphere! So, my point here is that if what he had seen is that straight line (and imperialist view imposed over the world multitude), what curves given us by is what goes beyond over those fatalistic imagery conditions defining Democracy, State, Freedom, Islam, Terrorism, etc.
It is on those moments that sound start to emerge. I’m thinking about Gordon Shrigley work (presently at IMT Gallery in London) Heaven’s Gate comprising 14 slabs of straight small lines of chalk on painted board as musical compositions. An endless vocabulary of things describing that that was and is around us, with each slab resonating different soundscapes and compositions. It sprouts from the most inconvenient places and moments.
Tuesday, 14 October 2014
Friday, 10 October 2014
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Obra Sonora
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Obra Sonora
Carroll / Fletcher
"Voice Array (2011) is an interactive installation that uses glimmering white LED lights to visualise and play back the voices of thousands of gallery visitors. As a participant speaks into the intercom system, his or her voice is" ... MORE ...
"Sphere Packing (2014) is a series of 3D-printed spheres designed to concentrate the entire musical output of a composer into a singular multi-channel device. Each sphere represents a particular composer, and contains" ... MORE ...
"In Pan-Anthem (2014) hundreds of national anthems are poised to play, upon the approach of the viewer. Individual movable speakers are magnetically fixed across the wall at the front of the gallery, precisely arranged to visualise a set of national statistics: whether population, GDP, land mass, year of independence, or" ... MORE ...
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Montreal, Canada) has held recent solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. He was the first artist to officially represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2007. He has also shown at Biennials in Havana, Istanbul, Liverpool, Montreal, Moscow, New Orleans, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney. His work forms part of several major museum collections including MoMA in New York, MUAC in Mexico, and TATE in London.
Previous Lozano-Hemmer sound installations include the recent public art installation Voice Tunnel (2013) where participants used their voice to transform seven city blocks of the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City; the memorial for the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City entitled Voz Alta (2008); and the radio electric scanning shadow-play Frequency and Volume (2003) installed at the Venice and Singapore Biennales, the Curve at the Barbican, Louisiana Museum in Denmark and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Obra Sonora
Carroll / Fletcher
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Montreal, Canada) has held recent solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. He was the first artist to officially represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2007. He has also shown at Biennials in Havana, Istanbul, Liverpool, Montreal, Moscow, New Orleans, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney. His work forms part of several major museum collections including MoMA in New York, MUAC in Mexico, and TATE in London.
Previous Lozano-Hemmer sound installations include the recent public art installation Voice Tunnel (2013) where participants used their voice to transform seven city blocks of the Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City; the memorial for the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City entitled Voz Alta (2008); and the radio electric scanning shadow-play Frequency and Volume (2003) installed at the Venice and Singapore Biennales, the Curve at the Barbican, Louisiana Museum in Denmark and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Michael Petry: Libations
Michael Petry
Libations
Trienal in Alentejo
Michael Petry brings to the Palácio dos Duques de Cadaval, on the 1st of October, an installation that evokes the winery tradition of Alentejo associated with the symbolism of the bowl as an object used to carry offerings.
Libations
Trienal in Alentejo
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