THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC
interfaces between visual arts and music
curated by Johannes Fricke Waldthausen
24/11/05 – 11/02/06
Opening: 24/11/05, 7-9 pm
Press preview by appointment
Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers
Schellingstr.48
D-80799 Munich
Fon 49.89.33040600
Fax 49.89.397302
contact@spruethmagers.com
http://www.spruethmagers.com
Sprüth Magers Projekte
Ludwigstr.7
D-80539 Munich
Fon 49.89.28890760
Fax 49.89.28890761
projekte@spruethmagers.com
http://www.spruethmagersprojekte.com
Sadaane Afif John Armleder John Baldessari Mathew Barney/ Arto Lindsay Pash Buzari Bruce Conner Sean Dack Walter Dahn Jeremy Deller Thomas Demand Simon English Cerith Wyn Evans Sylvie Fleury Robert Frank Liam Gillick/ Phillipe Parreno Douglas Gordon Dan Graham
Andreas Gursky Stefan Hirsig Christian Holstad David Lamelas Robert Mapplethorpe Christian Marclay David & Albert Maysles/ Charlotte Zwerin Jonas Mekas Jonathan Monk Simon Moretti Paul Morrissey Raymond Pettibon Zbigniew Rogalski Steven Shearer Hedi Slimane Thaddeus Strode Mika Taanila Wolfgang Tillmans Rirkrit Tiravanija Essi Utriainen Banks Violette
The exhibition “Thank You For The Music” examines music and pop culture, their various market mechanisms and the liberation from traditional copyright restrictions as a ubiquitous source of artistic inspiration — one that has become a global phenomenon and a permanent aspect of everyday experience. Drawing on a selection of contributions by more than 30 international artists, filmmakers and musicians, the show attempts to position intersections between visual arts, music culture and music history within a larger social context. A main focus is the presentation of a series of contemporary artistic strategies that use various methods to confront more recent music history as well as the presentation of diverse intersections of music, sonic relationships and visual media. Whilst the 1960s counter-culture movement and the 1970s Punk Avant-garde serve as a historical backdrop, the influences and effects of music culture on youth cultural movements are depicted as catalysts for the various criteria of inclusion in and exclusion from different Avant-garde movements. “Thank you for the Music” addresses the epoch’s value chains, amongst others by scrutinizing the mythology and the phenomena of the „Rock Star“, and juxtaposes them to the works of two generations of artists — then and now.
Towards the middle of the 90s, an analytical delineation of the aesthetic territories between art, sound, and music seemed to have lapsed. The montage and recycling of existing cultural material has become a starting point for new artistic production. Where are the boundaries between “an original“ and “a copy“, beyond traditional copyright restrictions? Welcome to Copyland! The discourse about precise distinctions has become less relevant and its violation has deeply embedded itself in pop culture. Conversely, questions of production-contexts, intellectual property and copyright issues became significant in respect to the distribution rights of artworks; If producers of artworks are equally eligible to capitalize and diffuse them within the markets due to licensing and contractual assignments, eventually artists must obtain the status of producers in terms of ownership. Subsequently, copyright issues are growing to be more critical than the question of authorship for contemporary artists.
The conceptual backbone of the exhibition is set against the questions of rigid definition, categorization and delimitations between visual art and music. As a contemporary cross-section of various media, “Thank You For The Music” endeavors to elucidate how music culture and the practices of visual artists influence each other without glorifying one media over the other and without succumbing to the categorization of particular connections between art and music. “Thank You For The Music” is less of a display of the current positions in contemporary art dealing with the subjects of sound and music as sources of creativity. Instead the exhibition poses questions about interdisciplinary similarities and mutual influence, presenting a fairly open concept of music and its relationship to developments in contemporary visual art. It is an experiment in progress that exposes shifting, co-existing boundaries and reciprocal interactions.
Special program in association with the exhibition to be announced.
For further information please contact Tanja Pol (tp@spruethmagers.com)
