Overview
"The building becomes a musical instrument played by the bodies that inhabit it, as singers reveal the acoustics of the space".
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is delighted to announce that it is now representing the young British artist Oliver Beer. Composition for Hearing an Architectural Space marks the beginning of this collaboration. It is a piece written specifically for the performance space at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin, and is part of the Resonance Project series, which has already found its place in such prestigious or incongruous venues as the Palais de Tokyo, a sewer tunnel and, recently, the Lyon Biennale.
Composition for Hearing an Architectural Space continues Oliver Beer's research into the human body's acoustic interaction with architectural spaces and the potential of this relationship to change our perceptions of them. As Beer says, "The building becomes a musical instrument played by the bodies that inhabit it, as singers reveal the acoustics of the space". Following a score by Oliver Beer, the singers stimulate the natural reverberation and the resonant frequencies of the space, exploiting the long echo in order to create multiplied harmonies that resonate long after they have ceased to be sung.
Oliver Beer was born in 1985 in the United Kingdom. He studied music before attending the Ruskin School of Fine Art, University of Oxford. His personality and his background in both music and fine art led to an early interest in the relationship between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture. He has translated his research into fascinating performances in which spectators take part by the mere fact of their presence, and he makes sculptures and videos that embody, literally or metaphorically, the plastic expression of this subtle relationship and the way the human body experiences it.
Oliver Beer's work has been the subject of many screenings as well as solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Farfa Abbey, Rome; in the contexte of the Lyon Biennale with the Palais de Tokyo; Modern Art Oxford; WIELS, Brussels; the Ménagerie de Verre, Paris; the Hebbel Theater, Berlin; and the Centre Pompidou. Oliver Beer has also held residencies at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and the Fondation Hermès.
Composition for Hearing an Architectural Space will be performed by Théophile Alexandre, Bastien Caillot, Rodrigo Ferreira and Tiago Matos.
