October 26, 2019 - February 23, 2020
Michaela Melián
Sound Art?
Group show, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona
The Sound Art? exhibition offers a critical interrogation of this category in art and presents an overview of the sonorisation of the art object from the late nineteenth century until today.
The show examines how, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many visual artists worked references to sound and music into their pieces using a variety of strategies. In turn, it also addresses the influence of visual arts on contemporary musical practices, and considers how several composers and visual artists turned the music score into a space for experimentation and performativity. In addition, the exhibition explores the sound experience aimed at the body as a whole and delves into the conceptual aspects of silence. Last of all, it invites the visitor to question the validity of the term sound art through a selection of works produced over the past ten years by artists from several generations and disciplines.
Sound Art? includes drawings, paintings, installations and sculptures. Celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the birth of Rolf Julius (1939-2011), this artist's particular world of images and sounds is the subject of a small monographic show within the broader exhibition. John Baldessari's first (sound) sculpture, visual works by John Cage and a sound piece by Louise Lawler installed in the Olive Tree Patio are some of the works included in the selection.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a famous article by Max Neuhaus (1939-2009), a pioneer in sound installations also born eighty years ago. The exhibition at the Fundació Joan Miró addresses the presence of sound in art and explains how the introduction of sound enables art objects to state their presence in a radically different, augmented way.
Curated by Arnau Horta