The Music Before and Behind the Object
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On the Possibility and Impossibility of Sound Biographies in the Works by Keith Rowe and Uwe Bressnik In the beginning was not the recording as Uwe In contrast, Uwe Bressnik’s images do not UWE BRESSNIK Though all these impacts are apparent in his Bressnik’s obsession with vinyl might suggest. In use the representation of sound to allude to was born in 1961, in Villach (Carinthia), and music and painting, Rowe succeeded in creat- the beginning was a sound. The same applies actual sounds but to recordings of sounds. studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna ing his individual way and style of music-making to Keith Rowe’s paintings and assemblag- Furthermore, the artist represents these in from 1983, under Sepp Moosmann, Peter and painting that influence each other in his Uwe Bressnik es — they wouldn’t exist without the sounds abstract spatial terms. The grooves we see on Weibel and Oswald Oberhuber. He graduated work. He lives and creates in Vallet, France. that preceded them. The silence of his still lifes the vinyl are visually deceptive simulations of in painting and freelance graphics in 1989, under wouldn’t be possible without the noise of the sound recordings. Regular grooves become Ernst Caramelle. Bressnik pursues a transmedial JOZEF CSERES electric guitar alternated with various objects the irregular isobaths that transcend the round approach, he works on an ongoing actual- Jozef Cseres is a Slovakian scholar specialising as well as radio broadcasts. Rowe is a musician surface of the recordings on vinyl. Bressnik isation of the conventional genres of graphics, in the aesthetics and philosophy of art, he is oc- and a fine artist. In both of his professions he uses them to stratify a space around the events painting and sculpture by reinterpreting them casionally also active as a curator and publisher. — Keith Rowe respects silence as a dynamic background for that once attracted his attention. This kind of with the visual achievements of adjacent Under the name HE yeRME arS, Cseres balances on everyday life. He is truly aware of the fact that “audiography” evokes fictive scenarios that can cultural fields — such as new media, music and the borders between discursive and non-dis- without silence, just as without noise, nothing of no longer be realized, only actualized in the sound performances, or games and sports. His cursive modes of expression, and between essence could occur. Not in life, nor in art. artist’s — and the viewer’s — mind. By encircling artistic spectrum is similarly broad, ranging from art and games, performances, installations, the isobaths in the space of his interest, Bressnik drawing, (print) graphics, painting, sculpture, audio-visual collages and various intermedia. 4 –29 March 2017 Silence is required as the starting point for a outlines a terrain inhabited by virtual beings, photography, video, object art and installation He lives in Brno, Czech Republic. creative act, it exists as an un-antagonistic objects and events. This terrain’s lines of force to designing interiors, sound/-objects and precondition for sound (speech, gesture, depend on the abstract depth, which is itself a performance. In 2000 Bressnik’s artistic activity GEORG WECKWERTH Opening: 3 March, 7.30 pm stroke, writing) and at the same time preced- measure of the desire to conquer the realm of led him to focus on the links between Art and is a German independent artist-curator, exhibi- ing sounds, quasi-inaudible co-sounds, are simulacra. Sometimes (as in the series “Bear- Music, as well as leading to work as a musician tion maker and producer with a special focus always also to be inferred. Silence is also an beitungen”), the whole vinyl is inserted into (autodidact) in live musical formats and free on sound and art. He is founder and artistic inseparable element of a more complex work a virtual landscape, transforming (reworking) improvisation. He lives and works in Vienna. director of TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien and cu- by this great artist. It stood at the birth of his it into a kind of dreamland. The artist is inviting rator of the permanent sound space TONSPUR_ music, although the artist himself never puts us into the spaces that he has articulated in the KEITH ROWE passage at MQ in Vienna [www.tonspur.at]. down his brush when engaging with music grooves. Although in terms of Deleuze’s and was born in 1940 in Plymouth, England, where to provide “visual” stimulus. Rowe’s paintings Guattari’s nomadology, these are smooth rather he studied painting at the local art school, and and assemblages are not mere illustrations but than striated; they are not coded (or decoded) here he met musician and band leader Mike The Music Before viable representations or animations of possi- but territorialized (or deterritorialized). Further- Westbrook who engaged him as a guitar ble eventualities, mostly of sound situations or more, the grooves we see are simulations; they player in his jazz groups. In 1965 Rowe stood at stories. Like his music, which Rowe has always simulate the symptoms of depth and evoke the birth of the legendary group AMM and And Behind The Object. approached like a painter, he does not paint hidden sound. The grooved depictions by joined it till 2005. Since then he has played and fictive scenarios, he gives meaning to the pos- Uwe Bressnik are pseudo-palimpsests: Our recorded solo as well as with many prominent sible processes that he amplifies (i.e. realizes). gaze expects hidden sounds, but such sounds characters of modern improvised music, and He presents us with well-composed imagery, are an impossibility; they have never really he also led the occasional formation MIMEO visual representations of an event (past or been heard, nor will they ever be heard. This (Music In Movement Orchestra). He rejoined the future). These are the same intermezzi formed impossibility of sound is where Bressnik’s paint- group after the AMM performance at the by Rowe, as a musician too, into sound blocks ings differ from Keith Rowe’s assemblages. But Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in and linked into improvisations. The latter pre- who knows what surprises and what similarities 2015. As an artist Rowe was influenced by ceded the second phase of his guitar art will come out in the collaborative works creat- the action painting of Jackson Pollock, pop-art Curated by Jozef Cseres — painted or assembled still lifes with guitars. ed by these two artists specially for this show. by Roy Lichtenstein, ready-mades by Marcel Duchamp, combines by Robert Rauschenberg, graphic scores by Cornelius Cardew and the & Georg Weckwerth indeterminism of John Cage. ORGANISERS: MAG3, Schiffamtsgasse 17, 1020 Vienna Opening hours: Tue–Fri, 5–8 pm Opening: In the presence of the artists Welcome: Gue Schmidt [MAG3] Bressnik, Uwe Introduction: Jozef Cseres & Georg Weckwerth Bressnik, Uwe Uwe Bressnik and Keith Rowe are two extraordinary artists with the Exhausted for Songs very different origins, background and poetics, but with an Ohrwurm intense interest in the visual representations of sound and music that somehow connects them. Both are active as improvising , 2011 musicians and so well-aware of the processual nature of , 2014 sound. To catch its ephemeral essence in a stable image or object is always tricky. But not for Uwe Bressnik and Keith Rowe! They offer us playful and visually attractive assemblages Keith Rowe & Uwe Bressnik, Collaboration-Work, 2017 (sketch © Keith Rowe) where image and sound coexist in conceptual consensus. The way that they achieve this harmony varies from work to work, and employs different means and forms of represen- tation — immanence, semblance, delusion, visual pun, or 1966/2017 Collaboration-Work, Rowe, & Keith Bressnik Uwe AMM Radio associative narration. Their inventive images show apparent Rowe, Keith Keith Rowe, Rowe, Keith stylistic identity but never tire. They force us to perceive and contemplate at the same time. © rework Rowe, © Keith Clipscape (Harsh) Clipscape Dog and Radio The exhibition features Uwe Bressnik’s gramophone re cord variations and exaggerations, mute sound objects, and , 2011 Keith Rowe’s narrative paintings, auto-referential prints (potential , 2001 Uwe Bressnik Uwe scores) and hanging guitar assemblages. — Jozef Cseres, Georg Weckwerth TRANSLATIONS: JONATHAN QUINN SPONSORS: DESIGN: ASTRID SEME, STUDIO.