Elizabeth Price: SOUND OF THE BREAK

From March 23 to May 29, 2023, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting a major solo exhibition by the Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price (b. 1966), including both new and recent works that are being shown for the first time in Germany. The artist creates moving-image works, composing visuals, text, and sound to form spatial installations that restage cultural and sociopolitical events and focus attention on largely unnoticed stories. Price’s moving-image works are grounded in a conceptual approach. Each of her videos is the result of meticulous research and a wide-ranging examination of archives and collections of material. In the course of her digital appropriation, Price develops new narratives from art objects and documents of historical events.

Dr. Sebastian Baden, director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, emphasizes: “Elizabeth Price’s artistic work focuses on the fine print of the information age. With her elaborate moving-image films, the artist challenges the logic of linear narration, traditional systems of order, and common evaluations of work, gender, power, and social visibility. Price is interested in the rereading of data, the observation of marginal notes and secondary information. Through her specific process of digital deconstruction and retelling, her videos allow for polyphonic new perspectives on social structures.”

Initially working with PowerPoint, and now with a professional video-editing program, the artist creates moving-image films that combine photographs, archival materials, documents, text, graphics, animation, and sound to form new contexts. A key component of these works is their deployment of sound in space. The visual and sonic narrative is created through the acoustic atmosphere of a technological-synthetic voice-over. The hierarchical world of work’s transformation through digitization is a recurring theme, in particular the rise of information work, office activities, and administration. Price’s videos raise questions about power, gender, value, and language, situating them in the shared space of technology and culture.

Matthias Ulrich, curator of the exhibition, on the artist: “Elizabeth Price forms her elaborate video, or rather moving–image works into multi-layered narrative architectures. She assembles these from a number of individual voices—both acoustic and visual—and from a variety of sources. Whether recording, arranging, or reassembling, it is the process of digitization that distinguishes her work. Sound in particular plays a crucial role for the artist, as the title of the exhibition already declares. She thus makes markers in her art in order to emphasize changes, decisions, and consequences, both formally and politically.”

The Schirn is showing two expansive installations, each with two corresponding video works: A RESTORATION (2016) and FELT TIP (2018), as well as UNDERFOOT (2022) and NIGHT OF THE WORLD (2023). In addition, four video lectures on view provide insights into the artist’s working process.

The exhibition Elizabeth Price: SOUND OF THE BREAK is supported by the Friends of the Schirn Kunsthalle e.V., with additional support from the British Council.

Director: Dr. Sebastian Baden
Curator: Matthias Ulrich, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Press contact: Johanna Pulz (Head of Press/Public Relations): presse@schirn.de / T +49 (0) 69 29 98 82 148
Press material: schirn.de/en/newsroom