Florian Hecker
12 February – 28 March 2010
64 Chisenhale Road
London E3 5QZ
+44 (0) 20 8981 4518
mail [at] chisenhale.org.uk
At Chisenhale Gallery Hecker will present a series of four independent, electro-acoustic works that lead the visitor around the gallery space, where each work exposes a fault line in the traditional categorizations of auditory events, auditory objects or streams. The works range from a 5-channel piece where the perceptual organization of a sequence of tones changes according to the position of the visitor to an apparently monophonic piece in which a single, directional loudspeaker points towards a tiled section of the wall; here, the localisation of the emitted sound oscillates between the speaker and the reflective white surface.
2 x 3 Kanal (2 x 3 Channel, 2009) consists of two separate 3-channel pieces, which rotate simultaneously – one clockwise, the other counter clockwise – around the three speakers. A seemingly ever upward moving sonic structure alternates with a sequence of tones illustrating Diana Deutsch’s ‘Tritone Paradox’. The 2-channel piece, Magnitude Estimation (2010), features a voice reading the loudness values of a given sound. These same utterances are emitted synchronously from an opposing loudspeaker, creating an auditory chimera while doubling the voice, the signification and the measurement of what one hears.
The display of loudspeakers – either suspended from the ceiling or wall-mounted – creates a multimodal amalgamation of auditory and spatial components, constructing an invisible architecture within the gallery, where boundaries are demarcated by the transitions between one sound work and another.
Hecker was born in 1975 in Kissing, Germany. Working in performance, studio and installation, he frequently collaborates with academic researchers in auditory perception and computer music, as well as with other artists such as Aphex Twin, Russell Haswell and Cerith Wyn Evans. He has presented his work internationally including most recently at the 53rd Venice Biennale; BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna; Evento, Bordeaux, France; The Morning Line, Youniverse, 3 Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Spain; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2009); Manifesta 7, South Tyrol, Italy, (2008); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, France, (2006). Forthcoming exhibitions for 2010 include MMK: Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt, Germany. Hecker is also a regular performer and has an extensive discography including Haswell & Hecker, Blackest Ever Black, Warner Classics (2007) and his most recent release Acid in the Style of David Tudor, Editions Mego (2009).
Talks and Events
Saturday 27 February, 2pm Independent writer and curator David Bussel leads a tour of the exhibition.
Thursday 18 March, 7pm Robin Mackay, philosopher and editor of the journal Collapse, discusses how Florian Hecker’s engineering of perception-as-hallucination invokes a fundamental philosophical question that haunts the scientific discipline of psychoacoustics: What is an (auditory) object?
Opening hours
Wednesday to Sunday 1 – 6pm
Thursday 4 March until 9pm
Chisenhale Gallery is funded by Arts Council England and is a registered charity no. 1026175
Exhibitions Partner 2010: Outset Contemporary Art Fund
With thanks to Sadie Coles HQ, London and Galerie Neu, Berlin.
