Ensemble

September 7 - December 16, 2007

Exhibition Walkthrough with guest curator Christian Marclay and ICA Director Claudia Gould
Thursday, September 6, 5pm. ICA Members Only.

Opening Reception
Thursday, September 6, 6-8pm

View the CBS News coverage of Ensemble and ICA Director Claudia Gould on "A Woman's View with Alycia Lane".
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The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is pleased to present "Ensemble," a group exhibition of works that make sound, guest curated by artist and musician Christian Marclay. Marclay has been selected as the inaugural curator of the Katherine Stein Sachs CW'69 and Keith L. Sachs W'67 Guest Curator Program, a new initiative designed to bring outside points of view to ICA. Marclay is a leading figure in the worlds of performance, visual art and experimental music.

Likening his approach to that of a composer, Marclay has chosen a variety of sculpture and installations based on their sound quality and compatibility to sonically inhabit the same large first floor gallery. Visitors are invited to interact with some of the works, others are triggered by motion detectors, or set on timers. The installation will create an ambient sound environment, intermittently producing a wide range of sounds, from the very quiet notes of a music box to the loud ringing of a bronze bell. They have been selected so that they can share the same resonant space and interact like the various instruments of a musical ensemble. It will include iconic works by artists such as Harry Bertoia, Yoko Ono, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, as well as new works by the current generation.

Whether it comes from sonic or video art, in the curatorial field, sound is often relegated to isolated exhibition spaces where it cannot interact, or presumably disturb, other pieces. Marclay proposes to work against that impulse by intentionally intermingling pieces to see what may result when they are put together for an entirely unprecedented curatorial purpose.

This exhibition will be a listening experience, enhanced by a series of music performances, in which artists and musicians invited by Marclay will perform within the exhibition, reacting to the artworks' sounds. The exhibition will be documented by a CD featuring recordings of the installation and performances, and a text by Christian Marclay.

Christian Marclay (b.1955 in San Rafael, California, raised in Geneva, Switzerland, lives in New York) is an artist and musician who is as highly regarded for his work as a visual and performance artist, as he is for being a composer and deejay. He began performing music in the late 1970s, while still a student at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, at which he had enrolled after attending art school in Geneva, where he had grown up. Among his many important projects are: "Shake, Rattle and Roll: Christian Marclay," Franklin Art Works in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; "Christian Marclay: Video Quartet," Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; and "Amplification" at the Church of San Stae for the Venice Biennale (this installation represented Switzerland). In 2003, his work was the subject of a major survey organized by Russell Ferguson at the UCLA Hammer Museum.

Marclay has had a significant presence in Philadelphia since 2003, when the Philadelphia Museum of Art invited him to participate in their "Museum Studies" series. Marclay's "The Bell and the Glass" created an exploratory intersection between the cracks of two Philadelphia landmarks: the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass. (The local experimental music group Reláche performed as part of the exhibition.) Currently, Marclay is a member of the curatorial team who is developing programs and exhibitions for "Hidden City", an initiative of Peregrine Arts. In December 2006 Marclay performed at ICA with John M. Armleder in conjunction with Armleder's exhibition of drawings then on view. Marclay's art is featured on the cover of the survey Sound Art Beyond Music, Between Categories, published by Rizzoli and will be released this November while "Ensemble" is on view at ICA.

Participating artists include: Terry Adkins, Doug Aitken, Darren Almond, John M. Armleder, Fia Backström, Harry Bertoia, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Angela Bulloch, Martin Creed, David Ellis, Mineko Grimmer, Tim Hawkinson, Jim Hodges, Evan Holloway, Pierre Huyghe, Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Nina Katchadourian, Martin Kersels, Jon Kessler, Katja Kölle, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carolee Schneemann, Noah Sheldon, Yoshi Wada and Angela White, among others.

Installation views at ICA. Photos by Aaron Igler. > click to enlarge







Related Programs:

THE ACCOMPANISTS

WHENEVER WEDNESDAYS, 5:30PM

Solo musicians play along with more than 25 mechanical, kinetic, or otherwise interactive, acoustic artworks included in the exhibition "Ensemble." Intermittently the works produce a wide range of sounds, from the very quiet notes of a music box to the loud ring of a bronze bell, creating a fluid and unpredictable sonic environment. The live performers play along and react to the sculptures, adding another layer of sound to the exhibition. 

ICA members and PennCard holders only. Space is limited and reservations are required. Please rsvp via email to rsvp@icaphila.org or fax your reservation to 215.898.5050. No phone calls please. All other programs are free with admission and do not require reservations, unless otherwise noted.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Shelley Hirsch
September 19 @ 5.30pm

Shelley Hirsch is "an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer, and performance artist " (Anne LeBaron) whose work encompasses storytelling pieces, staged performances, compositions, improvisations, collaborations, installations, and radioplays, which have been presented on 5 continents.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi)
October 3 @ 5:30pm

Based in Brooklyn, New York, sound artist, composer, and founding member of the collective SHARE, o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi) is known for her performances and recordings that experiment, restructure and analyze one's relationship with sounds.

Lecture: Irwin Chusid
Thursday, October 4 @ 6pm

Record producer and music historian Irwin Chusid has dedicated years to unearthing and documenting obscure and unusual music in an effort to preserve some of the musical landmarks of our time. His book, Songs In The Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (A Cappella Books/Chicago Review Press) chronicles the work of some of the seminal figures of outsider music.

Location: Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk

Free Tour
Sunday, October 7 @ 1pm

Enjoy free gallery admission from 11am-1pm every Sunday and free tours on the first Sunday of each month led by ICA staff and Penn History of Art graduate students.

Catrina Hill, PhD candidate from Penn's Department of the History of Art, discusses "Ensemble" curated by artist Christian Marclay and the sounds he has composed using sculptures and installations.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Aki Onda
October 10 @ 5:30pm

New York based Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer, producer, photographer and writer. Onda is well known for his performances with multiple cassette players and electronics, that use field-recordings he has collected as a diary for more than a decade.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Mika Tajima
October 17 @ 5:30pm

Mika Tajima is a visual artist who often includes sound, music, and performance elements as extended sculptural parts to her multi-disciplinary projects. Tajima's work simultaneously utilizes and subverts particular modernist tropes, strategies, and design elements, where form becomes just shells to inhabit.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Terry Adkins
November 7 @ 5.30pm

Terry Adkins’ Lone Wolf Recital Corps usually performs at the sites of his sculpturally based memorials to relevant historical figures. Recited text, sounding sculpture, video, music and ritual actions are orchestrated to recover and reenact the deeds of the honored, which have included Jimi Hendrix, Sojourner Truth, John Coltrane, John Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois and Bessie Smith. Adkins is also an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Penn’s School of Design. A Spiegel Fund Event.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Alison Knowles
November 14 @ 5:30pm

Alison Knowles is a germinal Fluxus artist who works in the fields of visual art, performance and sound. Working from things close at hand and relying on an attentiveness to whatever happens to be going on around her, Knowles’ work is more found than made.

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Alan Licht
November 28 @ 5:30pm

Alan Licht, whose sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe, has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar. With Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, he founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant-garde cinema.

Lecture: Alan Licht
Thursday, November 29 @ 6pm

Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends and electronica wizards to turntable masters and veteran Downtown New York composers. A contributor to WIRE and Modern Painters, his new book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, will be published by Rizzoli in fall 2007. Reception and book signing to follow at ICA.

Location: Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk

Whenever Wednesday: The Accompanists: Marina Rosenfeld
December 5 @ 5:30pm

Marina Rosenfeld is a composer and turntablist. She initiated a decade-long engagement with composition, improvisation, performance and situational aesthetic practices while still a student in 1994 with her “sheer frost orchestra:” a performance realized by 17 women on floor-bound electric guitars, deploying nail-polish bottles as sound-producing implements.


Whenever Wednesday: Film: Her Noise: The Making Of
December 5 @ 8pm

Marina Rosenfeld introduces the film Her Noise: The Making Of, (60 minutes, Electra) that documents the development of the “Her Noise” project between 2001 and 2005. The project was started in late 2001 by Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset, collaborators on a monthly series at London’s Lux Centre that investigated the lack of female presence on the independent music scene at the time. A Spiegel Fund Event.

ICA members and PennCard holders only. Space is limited. Reservations required.

The Sachs Guest Curator Program is made possible by the generosity of Katherine S. (CW'69) and Keith L. Sachs (W'67).

Images, top to bottom: Terry Adkins, Off Minor, 2004, mixed media, 48 x 81 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist...Tim Hawkinson, Music Box (Time in a Bottle), 1994, table, thermos, and steak knives, 38 x 12 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery, New York...Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Untitled (series #3): 5,6,7, 1999-2000, resin with wood armature, motor and heaters, 94 1/2 inches diameter, 9 3/4 inches high; weight: 176 lbs. Courtey of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.


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