Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

Installation view of "The Audio Show," Friedrich Petzel, July 14-Aug. 23.

November 2009 Reviews

Target Practice

Dorothy Iannone

Anton Vidokle

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Walid Raad

Richard Long

Song Dong

Barnaby Furnas FIAC’s Cour Carrée “So Good It’s Scary” Shows to See in New England Before Summer’s Out Recession Creeps Up on Basel Stuart Shave/Modern Art Moves Westward

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The seven hours’ worth of audio clips that played through a single set of speakers in the otherwise empty Friedrich Petzel Gallery this summer fell into two categories: recordings by artists and recordings selected by artists. In the first group was Dan Torop’s TC-Compose-Versify (2009), a collage of recitations of card-catalogue searches submitted at one library over several hours. A highlight among a host of works featuring stock sound effects was Corinne Jones’s GirlsGameDTrev1 (2009), which created the sonic impression of an underwater machine churning along steadily then suddenly falling apart.

Certain artists took the safe route of selecting recordings that evoke the drawings and paintings for which they are best known. Lorenzo de Los Angeles, a draftsman whose rosy compositions may be described as Baroque in spirit, contributed tracks from Handel. Barnaby Furnas’s recording of a brass band at the 1985 Philadelphia Mummers Day Parade would be the perfect soundtrack for an exhibition of his oversized, overpainted canvases. The clips from Walter Benjamin’s 1930s radio show for children that the gallery included came across more as a fancy backdrop than a relevant addition to the program.

Altogether, "The Audio Show," which included only a few artists experimenting seriously with the possibilities of sound, did not provide a true alternative to the summer’s glib group exhibitions that New Yorkers once again had to make do with. It may, however, have left the door ajar for a more rigorous exploration of new audio art in the future.

"The Audio Show" originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2009 Table of Contents.