Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM–), Graz, Austria
January 2015
January 31–March 5, 2015 This exhibition placed two complementary, yet significantly autonomous aesthetic positions in dialogue: that of Florian Hecker, the German artist and computer composer, and that of American sculptor John McCracken. The works of both artists probe the experiential capacity of the exhibition space—a white cube—through somatic and conceptual interjections. McCracken’s luminous, monochromatic Planks rest between the floor and the wall, occupying a hybrid position as both painting and sculpture and acting as a bridge between the world of the physical and that of the cognitive. In a sharp counterpoint, Florian Hecker dramatizes space, time, and the perception of sound through his computer-generated sound pieces under live exhibition conditions. The structures of his compositions unfold in a specific constellation of loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling. Series of sometimes pointillist, sharp, extremely dynamic, specifically acoustic experiences simultaneously evoke sensations, memories, and associations of three-dimensional, unpredictable intensity. Viewer, sound, and the exhibition space itself, whose auratic definition has been pierced, become an amalgamation, which does not provide any ideal perspective of the compositions, despite all of its formal and structural clarity. Learn more at Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM–)