News

John Baldessari at the Philharmonie de Paris

Beethoven's Trumpet (with Ear) by John Baldessari is on view in Paris through January 29, 2017. The work is included in Ludwig Van: The Beethoven Myth at the Philharmonie de Paris.

Beethoven’s life and legacy have become phenomenons that reach well beyond the realm of high culture. The Ludwig van exhibition reproduces his fascinating aura of popularity, which rivals that of political icons and rock stars… From Gustav Klimt to Joseph Beuys, André Gide to Michael Haneke, Edward Burne-Jones to Antoine Bourdelle, John Baldessari, Stanley Kubrick and Pierre Henry, the ghost of Beethoven has continued to haunt artists and fulfil its purpose: to electrify the eye, the ear and the mind. (Philharmonie de Paris)

Kay Rosen at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston

A Traveling Show opens next week at CAMH, featuring the work of Kay Rosen. The exhibition will include Y, a painted bronze edition produced by Beyer Projects in 2014.

A Traveling Show is an exploration of language, linguistics, and personal communication. At its heart is a selection of mail art exchanged over the past eight years by artists Matt Keegan and Kay Rosen. Their correspondence is augmented by a selection of artworks that includes wall paintings, sculptures, and drawings that demonstrate the artists’ unique and individual approaches to language. (source: CAMH website)

In the Studio with Vik Muniz

Architectural Digest just published this image of Vik Muniz with Mnemonic Vehicle #1 in his Brooklyn studio.

“What makes up the pictures inside your head? This is the question I’m always asking myself,” says artist Vik Muniz. Best known for assembling mundane materials into trompe l’oeil tableaux, which he then photographs, the Brazilian-born talent (shown above in his Brooklyn studio) is the subject of a retrospective opening this winter at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. In his inventive compositions, garbage, chocolate, and powdered pigment are arranged into facsimiles of famous paintings, while scraps of old snapshots are collaged into family portraits, and pictures of castles are improbably etched onto grains of sand. New sculptures reproduce toy cars—like those Muniz collected as a child—at full size. “I have no interest in what I haven’t seen,” he says. “You have to make images that are mysterious but still communicate ideas to everybody.” February 28–May 29; high.org

Rennie Collection, Winter 2015: Collected Works

Vancouver's Rennie Collection will open Winter 2015: Collected Works on January 23, 2016. The exhibition will present the work of 41 artists, including Tavares Strachan and John Baldessari:

John Baldessari's (b. 1931) larger-than-life Camel (Albino) Contemplating Needle (Large) (2013) casts its meditative gaze towards the eye of the adjacent towering needle, illuminating a confluence of beliefs and connecting cultures that have drifted apart through the course of history. (click for full press release)

Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise

John Baldessari's Ear Trumpet appears on the cover of the new English translation of Michael Chion's Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise (Duke University Press Books).

First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chion's Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates "acousmatic" listening—listening without visual access to a sound’s cause—to disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do. (Amazon)