Kristin Oppenheim
24 Apr - 21 Jun 2015
Kristin Oppenheim
Tap Your Shoes, 1996/2007
Sound installation with theatrical spotlight, velvet curtain, Photo: Marc Domage/FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou
Tap Your Shoes, 1996/2007
Sound installation with theatrical spotlight, velvet curtain, Photo: Marc Domage/FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou
KRISTIN OPPENHEIM
24 April – 21 June 2015
Curator: Jeanette Pacher
Kristin Oppenheim is best known for her highly intriguing sound installations. Since the 1990s, she has installed these audio works both in exhibition spaces and outdoors. The American artist associates the mesmerizing sound of the pure singing voice with video, architectural elements, or (swinging) theatrical lights. Her interest in theater, performance, and storytelling is apparent in the specific “staging,” into which the audience is literally immersed. In these “sonic spaces” she addresses issues such as memory, dreamlike states, the presence of absence, or the inner voice. The ghostly presence of the disembodied voice repeating song snippets over and again develops a narrative of great suggestive power.
The artist uses her voice as well as other sound sources as instruments to convey a certain (psychological) mood. She experiments with repetitions, echoes, superimpositions, intonation, and volume to control the impact of the soundtrack or amplify the desired perception of an intimate situation. With this purely auditive form of performance, the actor is not present, but the narrative and melody resonate in the listener’s imagination and become inscribed upon his or her memory.
In Echo, Oppenheim projects a narrative in which sleep, nocturnal waking, dream images play central parts: the exhibition revolves around a mental state different from our everyday consciousness with its focus on functioning—and revolves and revolves and revolves, like the canon-like chant in the sound installation Where Did You Sleep Last Night or the ghostly somnabulistic imagery of the new film installation Ultramarine, which might infiltrate our subconscious like a slow-acting drug.
The LP Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is released in conjunction with the exhibition.
Kristin Oppenheim was born in Honolulu in 1959 and lives and works in New York.
Invited by the board of the Secession
24 April – 21 June 2015
Curator: Jeanette Pacher
Kristin Oppenheim is best known for her highly intriguing sound installations. Since the 1990s, she has installed these audio works both in exhibition spaces and outdoors. The American artist associates the mesmerizing sound of the pure singing voice with video, architectural elements, or (swinging) theatrical lights. Her interest in theater, performance, and storytelling is apparent in the specific “staging,” into which the audience is literally immersed. In these “sonic spaces” she addresses issues such as memory, dreamlike states, the presence of absence, or the inner voice. The ghostly presence of the disembodied voice repeating song snippets over and again develops a narrative of great suggestive power.
The artist uses her voice as well as other sound sources as instruments to convey a certain (psychological) mood. She experiments with repetitions, echoes, superimpositions, intonation, and volume to control the impact of the soundtrack or amplify the desired perception of an intimate situation. With this purely auditive form of performance, the actor is not present, but the narrative and melody resonate in the listener’s imagination and become inscribed upon his or her memory.
In Echo, Oppenheim projects a narrative in which sleep, nocturnal waking, dream images play central parts: the exhibition revolves around a mental state different from our everyday consciousness with its focus on functioning—and revolves and revolves and revolves, like the canon-like chant in the sound installation Where Did You Sleep Last Night or the ghostly somnabulistic imagery of the new film installation Ultramarine, which might infiltrate our subconscious like a slow-acting drug.
The LP Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is released in conjunction with the exhibition.
Kristin Oppenheim was born in Honolulu in 1959 and lives and works in New York.
Invited by the board of the Secession