The Glass House is pleased to debut Gnomon/Wave Fulgurite l.l, a new work by New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach for Night (1947 – 2015), a “sculpture-in-residence” series presented on the Mies van der Rohe glass coffee table inside the Glass House, as well as Still Life (Glass, Grass, Sky, Sand) by ARP for Night Sounds, a performance series that parallels the exhibition. Selected by Jordan Stein, guest curator of Night (1947 – 2015) and project coordinator of Night Sounds, both Auerbach and ARP explore ideas of materiality, patterning, permanence, and entropy. Stein says of the pairing, “Their commitment to precision and beauty make the two artists an excellent, effortless match.”
Auerbach’s first sand sculpture, Gnomon/Wave Fulgurite l.l evokes a solid wave of light composed of tiny particles. The physical form of the work resembles that of a gnomon, the vertical component of a sundial that casts the shadow from which time is measured. Throughout the day, Gnomon/Wave Fulgurite l.l will cast a moving shadow along and through the glass table on which it rests. It will be on view until early September 2013.
Still Life (Glass, Grass, Sky, Sand) consists of a suite of compositions written for cello and French horn. Alexis Georgopoulos, the composer and artist who performs as ARP, remarks: “When Tauba decided to construct her sculpture from sand, the links between sand and glass became a motif in my piece.” Georgopoulos continues, “At points, the cello and French horn will be recognizable, at others blurred beyond distinction, leaving a glassy finish, the sense of a horizontal pane of sound. Slowing the instruments down renders the instruments transparent and difficult to make out. The source material turns into something else. Through a very simple act, involving time — often associated with sand, be it the hourglass or the crossing of deserts — the sound transforms itself. Whether crossing the Sahara or finding a place to throw one’s towel on the beach, a passage through sand alters one’s orientation to time and the way one views landscape. “
For the Night Sounds #2 performance, three double-sided vinyl acetates, or dubplates, will be pressed. The music on these six sides will contain specific, sometimes singular elements that make up the composition and will be arranged by ARP live, on site, using two turntables. The sound recorded on the fragile dubplates will degrade, distort, and dissolve during the performance. This quality will be exploited to emphasize ideas of material, relation to time, to sound, and to degradation and obfuscation.
Night (1947 – 2015) presents a series of contemporary artists whose work contends with the legacy of Night, a 1947 sculpture by Alberto Giacometti that disappeared from the Glass House in the mid-1960s, as well as the architecture of the Glass House itself. It is an unfolding sculpture exhibition held in the same spot where Giacometti’s Night once stood. On display for three to six months at a time, the individual sculptures in Night (1947 – 2015) will disappear after their run, making room for new work and new absences.
Night Sounds is a new performance series that parallels Night (1947 – 2015). Live musical acts are paired with the sculpture on view for each of the seven rotations of Night (1947 – 2015), engaging the current sculpture while contending with the legacy of Alberto Giacometti’s absent sculpture Night. Each performance is documented by Derrick Belcham, who will produce a short film that will be made available online free of charge. Night Sounds invites the audience and online viewers to reinterpret Johnson’s architectural opus, the Glass House.
Night (1947 – 2015) and Night Sounds are part of the strategic development of the Glass House from house museum to a vibrant center for intellectual and cultural life which aims to recapture the site’s earlier legacy as a laboratory for the presentation of new works and ideas. During their lifetimes, Philip Johnson and David Whitney were famously curious, generous, and eager to try new things on the grounds of the Glass House.
About the Artists and Organizers:
Alexis Georgopoulos is a composer and artist based in New York City. As ARP, he makes liminal, minimal music, often with analog synthesizers and, increasingly, with classical stringed instruments. Since 2002, he has performed internationally and has been presented by CHANEL, The Kitchen, PS1, Goethe–Institut, Deitch Projects, Walker Art Center, MoMA, New Museum, White Columns, 303 Gallery, Jacob’s Pillow, SFMOMA, Luggage Store Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery, New Langton Arts, Yerba Buena Center and Frieze Art Fair. He has released work on labels such as RVNG Intl, Type, Smalltown Supersound, DFA, True Panther Sound, Rong, Eskimo, Lo, Root Strata, Troubleman Unlimited, White Columns & Deitch Projects. He has remixed Lindstrøm, Delorean, Lawrence Wiener and Ned Sublette, Harald Grosskopf and Shocking Pinks and has been remixed by Hot Chip, Studio, Munk, Optimo, Etienne Jaumet and Soft Pink Truth.
Tauba Auerbach makes art that addresses language and logic through painting, weaving, photography, sculpture, bookmaking and instrument-building. Auerbach’s training as a traditional sign painter cultivated her love for words and letters; her text-based work is equally focused on the internal mechanics of language and its formal elements. Recent work has probed the fields of topology, color perception, and higher spatial dimensions. In her paintings, Auerbach confronts the division between the discrete states of flatness and three-dimensionality, gesturing towards a possible escape from the latter. Auerbach’s one-person exhibition, Tetrachromat, presented at Bergen Kunsthall and Malmö Konsthall is currently on view at Wiels Contemporary Art Center. Her work was included in MoMA’s 2012 exhibition Ecstatic Alphabets: Heaps of Language, the 2010 Whitney Biennial, MoMA P.S. 1’s 2010 Greater New York and the New Museum’s 2009 Younger Than Jesus. In 2011 Auerbach was awarded the Smithsonian’s Artist Research Fellowship. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and STANDARD (Oslo), Norway.
Derrick Belcham is the videographer of “Night Sounds.” Based in Brooklyn, New York, Belcham is an internationally recognized Canadian filmmaker, known for his work in vérité music documentary. He has worked with artists such as Philip Glass, Thurston Moore and Wilco. He is presently working on a series of dance films featuring acclaimed dancers of New York City performing choreography and improvisations in the streets of the city.
Jordan Stein Jordan Stein is a curator, programmer, and researcher based in San Francisco, CA. His recent projects have appeared in the New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, and NPR. He is an Assistant Curator at the Exploratorium, a museum of human perception, and is a co-founder of Will Brown, an experimental exhibition and program space. He also operates Glass, house, a collaborative operation concerned with transparency. He has twice been awarded the Alternative Exposure Award from Southern Exposure, and—with Will Brown—was a 2013 artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005.His latest project, The Best Things in Museums are the Windows, a four-day trek with Harrell Fletcher to the top of Mount Diablo, takes off from the Exploratorium in July, 2013.
The Glass House was built between 1949 and 1995 by architect Philip Johnson, the Glass House is a National Trust Historic Site located in New Canaan, CT. The pastoral 49-acre landscape comprises fourteen structures, including the Glass House (1949), and features a permanent collection of 20th century painting and sculpture, along with temporary exhibitions.
For more information: http://www.fcbuzz.org/events/visual-arts/7835/
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