The Art Institute of Chicago June 12–August 29, 2010
Christian Marclay. Vocal Mashup, 2009. ©
Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
Overview:
Blue, blue, electric blue That’s the color of my room Where
I will live . . .
I will sit right down Waiting for the gift
of Sound & Vision —David Bowie, "Sound & Vision,” Low,
1977 Even before Bowie united them in song, sound and vision had
been closely intertwined in the visual and audio art recordings of the
early 1970s. This focused exhibition of a dozen works in various media
explores the symbiotic relationship between art and music, presenting
humorous yet rigorous investigations in which the two do not connect in
any synesthetic sense but rather come together via acts of
transposition—balls cast aloft are made to resemble notes in a musical
score, honking drivers are photographed in mock (and silent) symphonic
array, artists’ names are called out as if by imaginary birds.
At the center of the installation hangs the recently acquired Auto
Series, a unique piece from 1971–73 by American artist Robert
Watts. These 23 photographs capture drivers sounding their horns while
nearing a bend in the road beside the artist’s Pennsylvania home.
Another audio/auto piece is the six-part Car Radios (Autoradios)
by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, consisting of photographs taken
during the 1970s and 1990s "when good music was playing.” Louise
Lawler’s Bird Calls, a sound piece from 1976, and John
Baldessari’s 1973 Songs: Sky/Sea/Sand, from the Hirshhorn
Museum, give a strong sense of the relations of sound to vision in the
1970s.
More recent artists have also pursued the theme, in some
cases making it a central aspect of their practice. Artist and
experimental DJ Christian Marclay has visualized the musical in
consistently funny and frustrating ways, most recently by creating
cyanotype photograms using unspooled cassette tapes as photosensitive
material. The videos of Dara Birnbaum, David Hammons, Hirsch Perlman,
and Cory Arcangel pick up this direct correlation between art and music
in their work with the moving image. These pieces all show humor,
low-tech inventiveness, rigor masked with deceptive nonchalance—and a
real, unconventional love of art and music. A series of Friday
night performances, Summer
Sounds, accompanies this exhibition. Plus, join us weekly for
Internet
Video Thursdays.
Tomado de: http://www.artic.edu
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