Lothar Baumgarten   Seven Sounds / Seven Circles   25 | 04 – 21 | 06 | 2009    
 
   
  
Invitation booklet
download PDF
  
 
 
         

1 Lothar Baumgarten
Nachtflug, 1968 – 69

2 Lothar Baumgarten
America Señores Naturales, 1984





   Along with other major artists of his time like Joseph Beuys, Walter de Maria, or Robert Smithson, Lothar Baumgarten significantly extended the bounds of the art of the 1960s, particularly through his exploration with and in his reflections on the source of “nature.” However, unlike his American colleagues who oriented themselves on the power of reality, Lothar Baumgarten challenged the Eurocentric view and, alternating between research and documentation, openly confronted the unknown site-specific “other” of a given location. Again and again he tracked down the phantom of “nature” within culture through his ephemeral, three-dimensionally materialized comments, drawings, photographs, slide projections, films, and documentary sound recordings. In long-term projects he developed presentation spaces that primarily explored different cultural systems and their specific conceptions of space and time.
For Bregenz the artist is developing a work that is radically new even to himself. Departing from sound recordings made during a four-year period on Denning’s Point, a peninsula that juts out into the Hudson River north of New York, Lothar Baumgarten will create an audio work in seven “phonic sculptures” for three floors of the KUB. They will be acoustic pieces of urban phonetic structures marked by changing weather conditions, animal cries, and sounds made by plants and the movements of man and machine. A document of found conditions that renders audible a phonic reality exposed to the changing seasons (ice floes, diesel locomotives, bullfrogs, wind and rain ...). On each floor the visitor will encounter a different, roughly one-hour-long acoustic picture amidst empty architecture. These sound pieces draw their physicality and sculptural character from the complexity of their intonation. They have a symphonic dimension.
Special surround sound technology virtually transports the listener to the location where the events took place and lets him or her experience the drama and powerful enactment of nature transformed into culture. Special surround sound technology virtually transports the listener to the location where the events took place and lets him or her experience the drama and powerful enactment of nature transformed into culture.		    
         
 
           
  
         
1 Lothar Baumgarten
Tableau Vivant, 1969

2 Lothar Baumgarten
Theatrum Botanicum,
1993 – 94
Fondation Cartier
pour l´Art Contemporain, Paris

3 Lothar Baumgarten Amazonas-Kosmos, 1969/1971

4 Lothar Baumgarten
Caiman, 1970

© Lothar Baumgarten, VBK, Wien, 2008

 

  

Excerpted from the text by Kaira Cabañas. A summary of the text can be found in the enclosed booklet on the exhibition:
“For his current exhibition Seven Sounds / Seven Circles at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Baumgarten’s point of departure is Denning’s Point, a heavily wooded and overgrown peninsula on the east bank of the Hudson River. Part one of the exhibition includes three slide projections with images of this wasteland, former site of the Denning’s Point Brick Works Company. In the course of viewing the 404 slides, the visitor will discern the dynamics of growth and change made visible through the vegetation’s abstract compositions and also notice the subtle traces of industry still scattered throughout the area. The exhibition’s second part includes seven sound pieces, each one hour in length, and similarly recorded on the peninsula. Presented in discrete spaces and under varied lighting conditions, these “phonic sculptures” provide an expansive sense of site through their atmospheric presence and unexpected merging of sound patterns, both natural and cultural. Indeed, what Baumgarten describes as a “dramatic dialogue between culture and nature” speaks to the ongoing coexistence of the two in this region, while the work’s instantiation pushes the limits of our expectations of what we think we can hear.“ (Kaira Cabañas)

Quote Lothar Baumgarten
“This work consists of seven phonic paintings, which each last 60 minutes. The material for them was gathered from 2004 on during several recording sessions using 24 bit 96 KHz surround sound technology. These audio pieces have a symphonic character. The movements, which divide the content, occur in cyclic arrangement and are based on acoustic laws that produce their moods through melody and tonality. Through their symphonic dimension and tonal language they recreate the site of original phonic reality. They inherently possess that overwhelming power of imagination that releases visitors after an hour of listening, yet without having completely revealed the conditions of the actual setting. Listeners remain uncertain about the what, where, and how of the stimuli they have just heard. The structures of this suggested world of sounds evoke their own inner images along this path. Layers of overlapping rhythm and intervals create a multidimensional, sustained chromatic unison, a steadily swelling crescendo of "voices" that set the scene for the events.“
(Lothar Baumgarten, 2009)

    
         
  Lothar Baumgarten,
born in Rheinsberg in 1944, lives and works in Berlin. 1968–1971 studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Joseph Beuys. 1977 and 1986 travelled to Brazil and Venezuela, where he lived with indigenous populations. Exhibitions (selection): MACBA, Barcelona; Migros Museum, Zurich (2008); MUMOK, Vienna (2006); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2001); Guggenheim, New York (1993); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1985); documenta X (1997), IX (1992), 7 (1982), 5 (1972). The conceptual artist Lothar Baumgarten’s work is mainly concerned with the antithesis of nature and culture and themes like colonization and civilization.		    
         
< back