PR / Galerie MeetFactory / 16 - 20 000 Hz

MEETFACTORY GALLERY

 

16 - 20 000 Hz

image - sound/music - time

Martin Andersson (CH), Jana Babincová (CZ), Milan Guštar (CZ), Morgan O'Hara (US), Tom Kotik (CZ/US), Jan Krtička (CZ), Hanne Lippard (GB), Radio Lemurie (CZ), Matěj Smrkovský (CZ), Jiří Valoch (CZ), Tomáš Vaněk (CZ), Lenka Vítková (CZ), Zimoun (CHE)

Curators: Daniel Vlček, Miloš Vojtěchovský

Exhibition architecture: Radim Labuda

The 16 - 20 000 Hz project presents a selection of visual and sound oriented tendencies in the Czech and international art scene. The exhibition confronts installations and objects with a diverse group of artists who, each in their own way, reflect the themes of complementarity and context of the phenomena of sound, visual image, space and time-based actions. As a metaphor, the exhibition can be perceived as an invitation to enter a sound labyrinth, built from apertures, echoes and sound interferences. The space of the gallery is intersected by different trajectories and remediation between image and sound. The exhibition presents graphical scores, textual artworks, kinetic and acoustic objects as well as interventions into the electromagnetic space and site-specific sound installations. The project is conceived as an intergenerational and inter-genre encounter. It features established artists who intensely investigate the acoustic side of visual art or its technical instruments (Morgan O'Hara, Jiří Valoch, Milan Guštar, Tomáš Vaněk) along with a younger generation of artists who approach the relation of sound, image and text from different positions (Jan Krtička, Matěj Smrkovský, Jana Babincová, Lenka Vítková, Tom Kotík, Hanne Lipard, Zimoun).

The dramaturgy of the exhibition suggests mutual overlaps and references among the exhibited works and their authors. Monumental murals by the American artist Morgan O'Hara are derived from her gestic drawings, which record the orchestration of motion. She works with the motorics of human body, changing rhythms of breath, heartbeat, with animal behavior or seemingly chaotic choreography of natural processes in landscape. Her large format murals reduce these drawings to organic structures of a full or negative silhouette, which evokes the morphology of Rorschach’s psychological images. This technique of drawing with both hands as a seismographic tool draws O'Hara's work close to some notable Czech artists: Dalibor Chatrný, Olga Karlíková, Vladimír Kokolia or Tomáš Vaněk. In his project, which is exhibited in the same room as O'Hara's work, Vaněk records gestures of a conductor on a transparent projection plane.

Jiří Valoch approaches the intertextuality and contextual elements of an artwork from different, yet also conceptual positions. He carefully selects and formulates his statements in bare sentences or surprising consonances, which emerge in between particular words, graphically and dramatically positioned into a certain space. His textual piece is placed on the side facade of MeetFactory, the so-called Wall Gallery. The aesthetic legacy of the written word is therefore symbolically connected to the shabby industrial architecture and the noise of a suburban landscape. 

Jan Krtička transforms his voice interpretation of John Cage's Lecture on Nothing into a multichannel sound system. The British artist Hanne Lippard uses the emphatic tone of her own voice to evoke an emotive illusion of proximity. When listening to an abstract "tale on a still life", the viewer constructs an imaginary space in his own mind. Lenka Vítková uses yet another narrative strategy. Her work with voice and literary text called "Ball Lighting" is featured in the exhibition thanks to the dramaturgy of Prague's nomadic Díra Gallery, focusing on sound-based projects. Milan Guštar implemented his older design for a multimedia installation inspired by an image of see landscape by Piet Mondrian, an artist who constructed his colorful abstract compositions through a sensitive musical or sound experience. Guštar transforms the visual model through a computer analysis and resynthesis of the image, creating an ambient electronic composition, animated and sonificated. 

An audiovisual installation by the Swiss artist Martin Andersson activates an immediate memory of the given space from which it arose. The artist executed a private sound intervention, where the building materials were the physical and acoustic qualities of the gallery room itself, resonating through motion of the artist's body and usage of different object-instruments. The individual soundtracks are subsequently layered and reproduced in the same space where they were recorded. A new installation designed by Andersson's compatriot Zimoun sounds the entire gallery room by a clash of two contradictory elements, water and fire. A system of infusion sets hanging from the ceiling creates a chaotic rhythm from drops of water falling on metal hotplates distributed on the floor. The entire space becomes a sound instrument of percussive half-rhythms led by chance and changing tonality of the sound created by evaporating liquid on metal.

A spacious kinetic and acoustic object by Jana Babincová, also hanging from the ceiling, evokes a digital visualization of spectral analysis. It is set into fine motion, therefore resembling a resonant musical instrument. Tom Kotík shows a series of objects from the "Architecture of Silence" series. The specific material reflects an imagery notion of sound. Rotating barrels by Matěj Smrkovský suggest their initial use for railroad timetables. They cleverly fit into the context of MeetFactory gallery, which is close to the Smíchov Railway Station. A life choir of six voices will interpret these “Voice Drawings” several times during the exhibition's duration.  

Radio Lemurie, in collaboration with Radio Skutečnost, prepared a miniFM intervention, which invades the electromagnetic specter of the gallery's immediate surroundings. Drivers and passengers with a transistor receiver can listen to a bizarre radiophonic assemblage of fairytale quotations, songs from old Prague by Karel Hašler, ghostly voices and other aural layers of the cultural memory of Smíchov, Zlíchov and other nearby places. 

EXHIBITION'S ARCHITECTURE AND CATALOGUE

The architectonic solution by Radim Labuda deals with both the acoustic and visual parameters of the exhibition space. The particular works are assembled as parts of a variable music score. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an original catalogue in the form of 12" LP with a booklet containing texts by the theoreticians Jiří Valoch, Miloš Vojtěchovský and the curator of MeetFactory galleries Karina Kottová. 

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM

11.4. performances during the opening: Martin Andersson, Matěj Smrkovský, Tomáš Vaněk

20.4. as a part of the Public House program: Opraváři ticha, Pavel Ptáčník aka Negative Friend

28.4. Prague premier of the French performer, musician and sound sculptor Antéz, who will perform together with Martin Vrba

13.5. - 19.5. project Osmoza, presenting several musical compositions for a spatial sound in Kostka Gallery, as a part of the Reverberation installation by Martin Hrubý and Petr Krátký. The ambient sound of the surroundings partly pervades the interiors of this industrial gallery, filled in with specific sound compositions (Michal Guštar, Slávek Kwi, Michal Rataj, Ladislav Železný, Dušan Urbanec a Markéta Cilečková, Lloyd Dunn, Michal Kindernay, Martin Janíček ad).

COOPERATION ON THE PROJECT

Intermedia Institute, Film and TV School of AMU, Mlok Association, Skutečnost Radio, Galerie Školská 28, Galerie Ferdinanda Baumanna, "a" civic association

The exhibition was supported by the Czech State Fund for Culture and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

The 2013 program of MeetFactory is supported by a grant from the City of Prague amounting to CZK 6.500.000 and by the Ministry of Culture, Czech Republic.