Sculptural sound works played a leading role in Julien Grossmann's first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. Grossmann ingeniously transforms musical instruments and sound equipment, draws on sound recordings from the early 20th century to the present, and makes surprising connections with histories of culture, economy and globalization. The exhibition offered an auditory as well as a visual experience.
Julien Grossmann (Metz, 1983) is trained in both music and visual arts. Music fragments, scales and keys form the basic ingredients with which he presents subjects such as culture and globalization. The number of scales in the world is as diverse as the number of languages. Grossmann plays with the ability of sounds to immediately evoke a connotation with a certain place and cultural context, however abstract.
Based on the idea that sound is an immaterial testimony to cultural and economic dynamics, Grossmann uses instruments that are closely linked to histories of empowerment and emancipation, or he hooks into songs that resonate with global tensions. But he also manipulates and distorts sounds, changes the key of an instrument and builds his own music players and audio sources. In this way he makes the associations that stick to certain sounds surprising, or he gives material that has had a major impact on cultural and economic relations in the world, such as crude oil, a literal uncomfortable connotation.
Parallel to his sound sculptures, Grossmann presented the new work 'Growth Products' in which he examines the iconography of the globalized economy. In this installation of fertilizer bags, he draws the viewer's eye to the curious mythological figures and ancient symbols of power and wealth that appear on them.