Los pasos perdidos
Group exhibition
25.01.2012 - 10.03.2012
Galerie Andreas Huber, Wien / Österreich
Alejo Carpentier’s novel “Los pasos perdidos” [The Lost Steps] was published in 1953. The protagonist, a musicologist and composer, is trapped between two worlds. Bored by western lifestyle, he gratefully accepts a research assignment. Fascinated and full of hope for cross-cultural enrichment and understanding, he advances deeper and deeper into a new acoustic world. But the sounds of the tropical forest are hard to conceive and in his way of thinking he repeatedly returns to European notation systems.... In a kind of vortex of emotional and rational drifts he loses his sense of time and, finally, also confidence in his mission.
The utopian dream of understanding beyond established forms of communication is a recurrent theme in Beatrice Gibson’s artistic work. Her science-fiction film Agatha, 2011, tells the story of a team of researchers on a planet whose inhabitants communicate by means of rhythms and music, and of the convergence of the two forms of life. In her work, the British filmmaker combines video and experimental music, music theory and sociology. For the artist’s intellectual approach for this work, the British composer Cornelius Cardew was a point of departure.
In their artworks, also Jessica Warboys and Ruaririadh O’Connell examine the effects of different vigours. Jessica Warboys’ Seapainting is the result of an experimental approach to painting, which widely defies the artist’s control. She places a canvas covered with pigments in the sea and, for a short while, leaves it to the water, waves, and sand. Ruaririadh O’Connell, on the other hand, transfers two methods of manipulation on wax tablets: mental manipulation by means of aggressive carpet patterns as applied in casinos in order to keep the gamblers awake and prepared to take risks; and a massage technique that manipulates the body, through various stimulations such as heat, cold, and pressure, in order that it no longer feels pain as the connection with the brain is, virtually, cut.
[Quelle: http://www.galerieandreashuber.at/]
