'When the Sun Goes Down and the Moon Comes Up' consists of several interlocking elements, most notably the combination of stage set and sound.
A short section of dialogue between two men repeats endlessly, the droll voices layered against noir-tinged muzak. Every time it repeats, the words, the circumstances, the nuances become more pronounced, circumspect, ambiguous. Resolution is never achieved.
The stripping-away of these layers through repeated listening is echoed in the spare, minimal set in which the audience finds itself located. Two small trees, leaves shed and replaced by small speakers, are separated by a long bare-plastered wall. The trees appear stark yet dignified, perhaps even beautiful, but certainly not natural. We could be standing in the midst of an abandoned film set with the soundtrack from a single scene played over and over again, reminding us how unnatural the cinematic becomes in its attempt to reconstruct the real.
When the combination of music, voice and set operate in full-effect, a heightened reality occurs, and a stripped-down, Beckett-like theatricality pervades, creating a deeply atmospheric visual environment without images. The more we listen, the more we see.
Presented at Bluecoat Gallery.
Presented courtesy of Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zurich.
[LESS]'When the Sun Goes Down and the Moon Comes Up' consists of several interlocking elements, most notably the combination of stage set and sound.
A short section of dialogue between two men repeats endlessly, the droll voices layered against noir-tinged muzak. Every time it repeats, the words, the circumstances, the nuances become more pronounced, circumspect, ambiguous. Resolution is never achieved.
The stripping-away of these layers through repeated listening is echoed in the spare, minimal set in which the audience finds itself located. Two small trees, leaves shed and replaced by small speakers, are separated by a long bare-plastered wall. The trees appear stark yet dignified, perhaps even beautiful, but certainly not natural. We could be standing in the midst of an abandoned film set with the soundtrack from a single scene played over and over again, reminding us how unnatural the cinematic becomes in its attempt to reconstruct the real.
When the combination of music, voice and set operate in full-effect, a heightened reality occurs, and a stripped-down, Beckett-like theatricality pervades, creating a deeply atmospheric visual environment without images. The more we listen, the more we see.
Presented at Bluecoat Gallery.
Presented courtesy of Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zurich.
