
Big Orchestra
Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany
19.06.2019 – 08.09.2019
Sound is an essential part of contemporary art. Yet musical instruments, which are simultaneously sculptures, represent a recent development in contemporary art that is still relatively unknown. In a group exhibition featuring international artists the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT will be presenting artworks that also perform as musical instruments by Doug Aitken, Nevin Aladağ, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Carlos Amorales, Tarek Atoui, Guillermo Galindo, Hans van Koolwijk, Constantin Luser, Christian Marclay, Caroline Mesquita, Rie Nakajima, Carsten Nicolai, Pedro Reyes, Naama Tsabar, and David Zink Yi. The focus of the exhibition, a concept that is itself in a state of flux, is the playing of these sculptural instruments. For the duration of the show, the Schirn will become a temporary concert hall in which the works are activated and visitors can experience their sound live. Mobile display architecture will create space for workshops in which the sound of the instruments will be explored by musicians in changing ensembles and subsequently presented in concerts. The artists will demonstrate their own works in performances. The exhibition presents various aspects of sound in relation to spiritual and religious issues as well as to technology, posthumanism, and politics, and even to the emotions of the artwork. The starting point for the concept is the extension of the definition of art and music by the Fluxus movement of the 1960s: happenings or actions were understood as “concerts,” because they were structured in a similar fashion to compositions and combined different media and materials with one another.