Jacob Kirkegaard / Konrad Smolenski
27 Sep - 22 Nov 2015
Jacob Kirkegaard
Untitled (Black Metal Square), 2015
Untitled (Black Metal Square), 2015
Konrad Smoleński
One Mind in a Million Heads, 2015
One Mind in a Million Heads, 2015
JACOB KIRKEGAARD / KONRAD SMOLENSKI
Sound Noir
27 September — 22 November 2015
The NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present the exhibition Sound Noir by the artists Jacob Kirkegaard and Konrad Smoleński.
The exhibition Sound Noir is part of the cooperative, international project INTERsound initiated by the institutions ikob – Museum of Contemporary Art, Les Brasseurs – Art Contemporain and the NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in order to bring together diverse, contemporary uses of sound as a medium within artistic contexts. The exhibition Sound Noir furthers the intensified entanglement of visual and auditory phenomenon that has emerged during the project with two installations, each of which offers acoustic interpretations of the culturally and politically loaded colour black.
By contrast, Jacob Kirkegaard‘s installation Untitled (Black Metal Square) addresses the colour black in an art historical context by reflexively approaching the subject of the Black Square. 100 years after Kasimir Malevich’s famous painting Black Square (1915) was first presented to the public, Jacob Kirkegaard develops the tradition laden motif with respect to its acoustic dimensions. His work Untitled (Black Metal Square) consists of a freely hanging black metal plate whose natural oscillations have been electronically amplified and fed back into the plate in order to generate an audible self-resonance. In his approach, Jacob Kirkegaard follows a deeper logic of the black square, one formulated by Malevich himself: ‘It is from nothing, in nothing, from which the true movement of being begins.’ One finds further clues to this mysterious void in a 1617 drawing by the English philosopher Robert Fludd in which he furnishes the edges of a black square with the words ‘et sic in infinitum’, thus marking a sensory relationship between nothingness and infinity. Paradoxically, this experience of total absence seems to lead us to the omnipresence of a potential universe, one yet to come. Though the artistic currents of the last century have urgently and thoroughly explored the mystical potential of the black square as a visual phenomenon, Jacob Kirkegaard’s Untitled (Black Metal Square) still succeeds at posing a new question: what would it be, what would we hear when our bodies were surrounded in this metaphysical black?
Jacob Kirkegaard (b.1975, Denmark) lives and works as an artist, composer and music producer in Berlin. His installations and performances have been presented in exhibitions at the MOCA in Roskilde (2015), the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2014), the MoMA in New York (2013) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2010) among others.
Originally from the Pink-Punk scene, Konrad Smoleński (b.1977, Poland) lives and works as an independent artist in Warsaw and Zürich. Alongside presentations of his works and performances at theVolkspalais in Den Haag (2014), the Kunsthalle Winterthur (2014) and the ICA in London (2013), Konrad Smoleński has also produced a solo presentation at the Polish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).
Sound Noir
27 September — 22 November 2015
The NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present the exhibition Sound Noir by the artists Jacob Kirkegaard and Konrad Smoleński.
The exhibition Sound Noir is part of the cooperative, international project INTERsound initiated by the institutions ikob – Museum of Contemporary Art, Les Brasseurs – Art Contemporain and the NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in order to bring together diverse, contemporary uses of sound as a medium within artistic contexts. The exhibition Sound Noir furthers the intensified entanglement of visual and auditory phenomenon that has emerged during the project with two installations, each of which offers acoustic interpretations of the culturally and politically loaded colour black.
By contrast, Jacob Kirkegaard‘s installation Untitled (Black Metal Square) addresses the colour black in an art historical context by reflexively approaching the subject of the Black Square. 100 years after Kasimir Malevich’s famous painting Black Square (1915) was first presented to the public, Jacob Kirkegaard develops the tradition laden motif with respect to its acoustic dimensions. His work Untitled (Black Metal Square) consists of a freely hanging black metal plate whose natural oscillations have been electronically amplified and fed back into the plate in order to generate an audible self-resonance. In his approach, Jacob Kirkegaard follows a deeper logic of the black square, one formulated by Malevich himself: ‘It is from nothing, in nothing, from which the true movement of being begins.’ One finds further clues to this mysterious void in a 1617 drawing by the English philosopher Robert Fludd in which he furnishes the edges of a black square with the words ‘et sic in infinitum’, thus marking a sensory relationship between nothingness and infinity. Paradoxically, this experience of total absence seems to lead us to the omnipresence of a potential universe, one yet to come. Though the artistic currents of the last century have urgently and thoroughly explored the mystical potential of the black square as a visual phenomenon, Jacob Kirkegaard’s Untitled (Black Metal Square) still succeeds at posing a new question: what would it be, what would we hear when our bodies were surrounded in this metaphysical black?
Jacob Kirkegaard (b.1975, Denmark) lives and works as an artist, composer and music producer in Berlin. His installations and performances have been presented in exhibitions at the MOCA in Roskilde (2015), the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2014), the MoMA in New York (2013) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2010) among others.
Originally from the Pink-Punk scene, Konrad Smoleński (b.1977, Poland) lives and works as an independent artist in Warsaw and Zürich. Alongside presentations of his works and performances at theVolkspalais in Den Haag (2014), the Kunsthalle Winterthur (2014) and the ICA in London (2013), Konrad Smoleński has also produced a solo presentation at the Polish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).