New Release
Gerðarsafn - Kópavogur Art Museum
13 August - 11 October 2015
Curator - Nadim Samman
ARTISTS
THE ICELANDIC LOVE CORPORATION - EINAR TORFI EINARSSON - ÓLAFUR ELÍASSON - INGIBJÖRG FRIDRIKSDÓTTIR - TYLER FRIEDMAN & ANDREAS GREINER - SIGURDUR GUDJÓNSSON & THRÁINN HJÁLMARSSON - HULDA RÓS GUDNADÓTTIR - LOGI LEÓ GUNNARSSON - Christina kubisch - KATRINA MOGENSEN - Boris Ondreicka - JEREMY SHAW - SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON - BERGRÚN SNÆBJÖRNSDÓTTIR - CHARLES STANKIEVECH - Curver Thoroddsen - Berglind María Tómasdóttir
Where does music come from, and how is it released? Is music an exception to the rule (of silence) or the greatest law of all? Are we composers or, perhaps, just instruments? NEW RELEASE brings together Icelandic and international artists whose work is in tune with these questions.
The dawn of the heliocentric vision, ushering in the age of reason and science, cast one of the most important elements of the classical musical imaginary into shadow: the Pythagorean notion of the harmony of the spheres. Instead of a grand celestial chord, encompassing all entities—living and inanimate—and sustaining them, the cosmos became dead quiet. Within this infinite void the earth was a little corner of whispers, hemmed in by mute walls of nothing. Thus, for the romantic sentiment music would amount to ‘pictures painted on silence’. It would take one Western artist’s engagement with Zen to push back against the spectre of universal acoustic void, offering a new musical cosmology—beginning with the axiom of four minutes and thirty three seconds of unplayed piano. Transcending polemic, this redefinition of the musical cosmos quickly converged with our increased mastery of technology and powers of observation—including space exploration. Since then, visionaries have embraced an expanded field of musical competence. Today, we may record the radio emissions of planets and compose with the electrical frequencies of plants. As such, a contemporary composer might be considered a (self-playing?) instrument in a conditional celestial tune. On one occasion she may be in harmony with a manifestly ‘musical instrument’, like a guitar, as the score takes shape. In another, in correspondance with water or perhaps radiation. What is the site of musical release? Molecules? Binary code? Symbol? Intention? Carbon? Perhaps all at once. Contemporary music is radically distributed, in both inner and outer space. And with this observation, once again, dawn breaks over the domain of truly universal music. NEW RELEASE samples the first notes and phrases of this day.
But, in addition, this exhibition includes a counter melody: Can we really think of ourselves as just a series of outputs—heartbeats registered as electrocardiograms, or likes? Even if we are only a small patch of ground in the realm of universal music, doesn’t this music have the capacity to make us figures—for a moment? And, in this moment, what is released from us—as us? Where are the boundaries between the instrument and the experience?—between human and not human identity as we move through universal music and all its simulacra. NEW RELEASE riffs upon these questions.
in Gerðarsafn - kópavogur art museum
in surroundings
The Icelandic Love Corporation (IS) is a group of three artists: Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir, Jóní Jónsdóttir and Eirún Sigurdardóttir. They graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1996. Since then they have lived and studied in New York, Berlin and Copenhagen and are currently based in Reykjavik. Their work has been exhibited at institutions including Kunst-Werke, Germany; the Icelandic National Museum, Iceland; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; the National Gallery, Poland; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; and the Amos Anderson Art Museum, Finland, amongst others.