Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Anri Sala which will open on Wednesday, February 23rd and run through March 31st .
On view in the South Gallery will be a selection of new works which will be shown in the U.S. for the first time. Shot in various locales in Europe and the United States, they include: "Long Sorrow" (2005), Untitled (Agassi)" (2006), "Air Cushioned Ride" (2006), and "Overthinking" (2007).
Anri Sala
February 23 - March 31, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, February 23, 6–8 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Anri Sala which will open on Wednesday, February 23rd and run through March 31st .
On view in the South Gallery will be a selection of new works which will be shown in the U.S. for the first time. Shot in various locales in Europe and the United States, they include: "Long Sorrow" (2005), Untitled (Agassi)" (2006), "Air Cushioned Ride" (2006), and "Overthinking" (2007).
Anri Sala is well known for his work in video and photography. He has long been as interested in the construction of light, sound and space, as in the potential that lies within their interference, and in the subversion of hierarchies within the traditional image/sound/viewer relationship. In the current exhibition the artist anchors his investigation of image and sound within the context of architecture, ambient noise, quotidian observation, and narrative encounter to frame and create four new works. The artist writes, "What I call place is where one remembers having been, which is not only made of space but also of time; it needs to be both, own its proper qualities, whether they are architecture, sounds, or events. Some places have no buildings or dates to be remembered, but they produce their own soundtrack." -- Anri Sala
"Long Sorrow" says Sala, is the result of a "rather particularly set-up situation, rather than a narrative structure. Its more a succession of tinted situations, colored by moments of tension, gestures and music that can make you feel.". The location for this event is Märkische Viertel, an area in North Berlin with dense apartment buildings, close to where the wall used to be, built between 1965 and 1974 as a new concept of building. The longest building here is nicknamed by its inhabitants Lange Jammer (Long Sorrow). In the film, suspended outside of the top floor of the building, the free jazz saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc responds to the city around him, improvising a piece with only his head visible through the window from inside the apartment. Sala positions his subject in suspension, such that the experience of place and sound is itself a "prolongation of the architecture of the 'long sorrow'". "Long Sorrow" was produced by Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan where it was shown in late 2005.
In "Air Cushioned Ride", while driving through the southwestern U.S., Sala has a chance encounter with the itinerant 'architecture' of a truck rest stop and the conditions are set for him to record an experience of place differentiated through sound. Listening to baroque music on public radio as he weaves in and out of trucks, Sala says, "I drove closer, going in circles, and something started to happen. Radio waves from an unknown station playing country music started to interfere with the baroque chamber music I was listening to…. The different waves would exchange 'places' due to the parked trucks that acted like a wall, redirecting at times one music while blocking another. During a full circle the music would shift several times, punctually, in the same places. When a truck leaves, it opens a gap in the 'truck wall' and creates a corridor for the country music to come back."
Like much of Sala's work, Untited (Agassi), captures the sequence of interstitial dynamics beneath the course of a regular event – a tennis game: "Agassi's eyes are late. The ball is no longer where it just was. The image projected captures a gap in time, a usually hidden moment, filled here by the delay between the direction of Agassi's look and the ball's position. Filming the image gives this delay a completely new duration… Time is rolling, but nothing is changing… Except twice, and each time for 3 frames long, a white round hole appears on the right topside of the image, next to the ball… In movies this white hole is a sign that tells the projectionist that it's time to change the reel, to preserve continuity. The time between when the first hole disappears and the second one appears is the time that it takes the ball, after an Agassi serve, to reach and hit the other player's field. When one sees the first hole, one "sees" the noise of the ball being hit by the racket and then, with the second hole, it hitting the ground. One gets to feel the time that it takes…" – Anri Sala.
Sala's most recent work, "Overthinking" 2007 takes as its starting point two photographs the artist found in the archives of the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. The photos depict a man flinging himself off a building, a little akin to Yves Klein's famous leap. The photos, classified under 'architecture' by Siqueiros, led Sala on a strange quest to determine why and to attempt a 'conversation' with the artist.
Anri Sala was born in Tirana, Albania in 1974. He studied at the National Academy of Arts, Tirana, 1992-1996; Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1996-1968; and did post grad studies at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing, France, 1998-2000.
Solo shows of his work have been held in 2005 at the Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; in 2004 at ARC Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; The Art Institute of Chicago; in 2003 at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; in 2002 at IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Dallas Museum of Art ; and in 2000 at De Appel, Amsterdam.
He has been included in numerous group exhibitions: "Time Zones", Tate Modern, London; "Faces in the Crowd", Whitechapel Gallery (2004); "Fast Forward: Media Art Sammlung Goetz", Karlsruhe, Germany; "Remind", Kunsthaus Bregenz; "Moving Pictures", Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2003); "XXV Sao Paulo Biennial"(2002); "Uniform/Order and Disorder", PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, NY (2001); Manifesta 3 Biennale Europeenne de l'art contemporain, Ljubljana (2000); the Albanian Pavilion, the 47th Venice Biennale (1999). His work is currently on view in "Sensorium" at the List Gallery of Art, MIT, Cambridge.
Please join us at the opening reception for the artist on February 23rd from 6-8 p.m, where Jemeel Moondoc will be improvising alongside his recording in "Long Sorrow".
