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19/10/2006

The Invisible show

MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea, Vigo

Curator Delfim Sardo

The Invisible show brings together a group of works that “turn the eye inwards", proposing the viewer to imagine or conceive a space or a situation through the suggestion of a sound vibration. Sound penetrates our bodies in a way that we cannot prevent or escape. Sound, that is broadcast sound, has also penetrated every area of our culture. Since the 1920s, recorded sound has multiplied the possibility of hearing sounds after they are first produced, enabling them to be edited, assembled, spliced together and broadcast.

In this way, sound, has permeated all other forms of art and representation, as well as all the possible means of presenting, distributing and viewing images, above all moving images, together with other artistic forms and methodologies.

The Invisible show begins by exploring historical references and then follows post-war developments that led up to the use of sound by contemporary artists. In programmatic terms, the exhibition is based on three key areas of reference in contemporary art: space, narrative and the transversal possibilities of the audio and visual fields.

Sound, which in this exhibition is almost exclusively the sound of the human voice, creates spaces and bodies and refashions them, that is, it turns them into other places, into other bodies, into utopias. It is a process of affection, the occupation of a space that is sometimes black, sometimes touching and poetic.

This museum, therefore, is not empty.
What fills it cannot be seen, but it is there.

The fascination of the 20th century art towards the non-visual found a suitable ground for developing itself in the field of sound rather than in the tactile or olfactory fields. The fact that poetry requires voice and the existence of the theatre thanks to the dialogue may be factors that provoke a deviation of the visual -the field of action of the art, objectively speaking- towards the sound. The use of sound or human voice is usual in the 20th century art as a supporting strategy to conceptualize the space. The sound invites us to locate the body in the place where the actions of the public and the artist cross in a performing way.

The Invisible show means an approach to this idea of space as a physical place, an area where the artists manipulates the sound as if this were a ductile material. The exhibition, co-produced by MARCO of Vigo and Centro Jose' Guerrero of Granada, curated by Delfim Sardo, includes a selection of works by classical contemporary artists that invite us to think about the space from the sound; the sound as voice or vehicle that contributes corporeity, based on non-visible components.

Objects, sounds and people sharing the exhibition space defines, in the artistic experience, a space that we may call sculptural, created by the abstract confluence between sound, space and body. While linking the space dimension and the sensorial experience we obtain the clues to face this exhibition.

The relationship between the visible and the invisible, between the acoustic plasticity of a work and material vacuity, is at the core of the curator’s discourse, which draws from a careful selection of key 20th century works. The evolution of sound in the field of art, determined to a large extent by the advances in electro-acoustics, runs through the broad period that embraces the art of noise of Luigi Russolo, Kurt Schwitters’ marriage of music and the visual arts, the phonetic poetry of Raoul Hausmann, and the subsequent experiments of Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, James Lee Byars, Janet Cardiff, Martin Creed, Lui'sa Cunha, Rodney Graham, Juan Hidalgo, Ceal Floyer, Joan Jonas, On Kawara, Antoni Muntadas, Bruce Nauman, Juliao Sarmento, Michael Snow and Stephen Vitiello.

Sound, as a medium, acts as a prolongation of space, acquiring an almost physical quality through its ability to evoke images in the listener, whose reception of them is part of the intangible experience that sound provides, by actually creating form and not only blending with it. Rather than addressing the entire scope of sound art, THE INVISIBLE SHOW sets out to analyse the evolution of the art of sound — as distinct from art with sound — and probe the nature of an art that cannot be seen but which is played out in the interface of space, sound, and viewer perception.

Artists:
Ceal Floyer (Karachi, Pakistan, 1968; lives and works between London, UK, and Berlin, Germany)
Raoul Hausmann (Vienna, Austria, 1886 - Limoges, France, 1971)
Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942; lives and works between New York and Barcelona)
Bruce Nauman (Fort Wayne, USA, 1941; lives and works in Galisteo, USA)
James Lee Byars (Detroit, USA, 1932 - Cairo, Egypt, 1997)
Janet Cardiff (Brussels, Canada, 1957; lives and works in Berlin, Germany)
Joan Jonas (New York, USA, 1936; lives and works in New York)
Joseph Beuys (Krefeld, Germany, 1921 - Dusseldorf, Germany, 1986)
Juan Hidalgo (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 1927; lives and works in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria)
Juliao Sarmento (Lisbon, Portugal, 1948; lives and works in Estoril, Portugal)
Louise Bourgeois (Paris, France, 1911; lives and works in New York, USA)
Luigi Russolo (Portogruaro, Italy, 1885 - Cerro di Lavenio, Italy, 1947)
Lui'sa Cunha (Lisbon, Portugal, 1949; lives and works in Lisbon)
Martin Creed (Wakefield, UK, 1968; lives and works in London, UK)
Michael Snow (Toronto, Canada, 1929; lives and works in Toronto)
On Kawara (26.963 days; since his date of birth until the opening date)
Rodney Graham (Vancouver, Canada, 1949; lives and works in Vancouver)
Stephen Vitiello (Richmond, USA, 1964; lives and works between Richmond and New York)
Vito Acconci New York, USA, 1940; lives and works in New York)

Catalogue:
On the occasion of this exhibition, MARCO of Vigo and Centro Jose' Guerrero of Granada have published a catalogue that includes a series of essays about the nature of sound in the artistic context. The texts by Douglas Kahn, Jose' Iges, Olivier Razac, Guy Rosolato, Christophe Kihm and John Cage, carefully recovered thanks to the generosity of both authors and publishers, allow shaping a small history of the encounter between sound and its physical experience in the artistic environment. A text by the curator explaining the concept of the exhibition is also included. The catalogue includes one CD with parts of the exhibited works, many of them available to the public for the first time.

Image: Rodney Graham

Organized by: MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo / Centro Jose' Guerrero, Granada

MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea
Rua Principe, 54 - Vigo Galicia
Opening Times: Tuesday to Saturday (including holidays), from 11 am to 9 pm Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm

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