Winter/spring exhibitions

INDUCTION: Tauba Auerbach and Éliane Radigue
The first in a unique invitational format exploring artistic relationships and influences, INDUCTION is a two-person exhibition of new paintings, videos, and glass sculpture by New York artist Tauba Auerbach (1981, Berkley, CA) alongside a sound installation by Paris composer Éliane Radigue (1932, Paris, France). 

Auerbach’s work probes systems of logic—mathematical, linguistic, and spatial—proposing ways to enhance their fluidity, or subvert them entirely. Most recently, her large-scale paintings and glass- and 3D-printed sculptures articulate the relationship between natural forms like the wave, vortex, and helix, with planes of sight and human gesture. Radigue is a leading figure in experimental music known for her early experimentation with overlapping tape loops, microphone feedback, and modular synthesizers. Radigue’s work stands out for its deep engagement with Tibetan Buddhism and the ARP 2500 modular synthesizer, which she used from the late 1960s to 2001, when she began composing primarily acoustic works.

Developed in collaboration, INDUCTION explores the potential of form and rhythm to induce altered states of consciousness focusing on Auerbach and Radigue’s shared interests, including Eastern philosophies and phenomenology. Radigue’s composition, OMNHT (1970) activates the gallery’s architecture—the work may be felt against its walls and heard throughout the space.

Responsively, Auerbach has choreographed an immersive environment populated with free-standing, double-sided paintings from the artist’s “Grain” series, along with her first substantial work in video—a four-screen installation of footage from her restaging of a physics experiment. The exhibition also includes a new “anatomical” sculpture, flame-worked by the artist in borosilicate glass. Auerbach’s new body of work emerges from research and self-experimentation in diverse but interconnected fields, from the cellular life of trauma in the body, to fluid dynamics, calligraphy, trance induction, and new theories of quantum consciousness.

INDUCTION is curated by Senior Curator Andria Hickey

The Founder’s Paradox: Simon Denny
The Founder’s Paradox presents a new body of sculptures, paintings, and prints by Berlin-based artist Simon Denny (1982, Auckland, New Zealand) that examine emergent conservative business philosophies and prominent mythologies around the figure of the entrepreneurial founder. These narratives draw on financial innovations like Bitcoin and platform monopolies enabled by the effects of big data and Web 2.0. Using the visual and formal language of board games, Denny re-articulates three popular games, “Settlers of Catan,” “The Game of Life,” and “Descent: Journeys in the Dark” with chronicles derived from radical and influential texts like Peter Thiel’s Zero to One and the libertarian text The Sovereign Individual. The exhibition also features collaborative projects made by MBA and Design students of the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, who worked with Denny during a course he co-taught in Cleveland.

The Founder’s Paradox is curated by Executive Director Jill Snyder with Assistant Curator A. Will Brown

Zigzags and Diagonals: Claudia Comte
For the fifth anniversary of MOCA Cleveland’s new building, Swiss artist Claudia Comte’s (1983, Grancy, Switzerland) large site-responsive wall painting redefines the museum’s ground floor spaces. For each new wall painting, Comte creates a series of compositional parameters from which she builds striking optical designs that reshape architecture and space. Zigzags and Diagonals engages the hexagonal planes of MOCA’s Farshid Moussavi-designed building with repeating zigzag lines atop a gradient fading from yellow to pink to purple. This hypnotic, rhythmic pattern is echoed in a roller-painted diagonals that engage the museum’s atrium and iconic staircase.

Zigzags and Diagonals is curated by Senior Curator Andria Hickey

Mei-Jia & Ting-Ting & Chih-Fu & Sin-Ji: C. Spencer Yeh
This new sound work by artist and experimental composer C. Spencer Yeh (1975, Taipei, Taiwan) explores the formation of language and identity as an imitative performance. The two-channel composition features four singing voices, including the artist’s, and is based on the traditional Chinese performance of Kouji Kouji.

C. Spencer Yeh is curated by Assistant Curator A. Will Brown