Julien Grossmann – Customs and Claims
Sculptural sound works play the leading role in this first solo exhibition in the Netherlands by Julien Grossmann. Grossmann ingeniously transforms musical instruments and sound equipment, uses sound recordings from the early 20th century to the present, and makes astute connections to histories of culture and globalisation.Grossmann plays with the power of sound, however abstract, immediately recalling a connotation to a particular place and cultural context. Building on the idea that sound is an immaterial testimony of cultural and economic dynamics, he uses instruments closely linked to the histories of empowerment and emancipation, borrows sounds that have become cultural cliché, and arranges songs that resound global tensions.
But he also manipulates and distorts sound, changes the tonality of instruments, and builds his own music players and audio sources. As such, he makes the associations and sentiments related to certain sounds appear enchanting or uncomfortable, and he connects sound to materials that have a significant impact on the world’s cultural and economic relations, such as oil.
Parallel to his sound installations, Grossmann presents works that examine the visual culture of the globalised economy.
Giuseppe Licari – Schlak
Schlak is the latest chapter in Giuseppe Licari’s research into the relationship between man and nature. In one of the most important raw-material producing areas of the European steel industry, like a geologist Licari collected the stones that remain as a residue after the iron is smelted at 1535˚C. Licari shows his slag stone collection alongside images that evidence how human activity has created a whole new geological layer. He also made pictures of the post-Industrial landscape – depicting its strange colours and hills up to fifty meters high – that are both alarming and fascinating. His slag stone collection reads like a geoloigcal record, attesting to the economic and social processes that shaped the contemporary landscape.