Exhibitions - God's White Noise

Exhibitions

Gottesrauschen, 2007

Installation views, Düsseldorf Kunstverein.

Courtesy the artist. Photographs: Laser Agtas

CHRISTIAN JENDREIKO'S

GOTTESRAUSCHEN (GOD'S WHITE NOISE):

Action for Players, Guitars, & Amplifiers

Saturday, February 6, 2010 7-11 PM

Organized by James Merle Thomas for Baer Ridgway Exhibitions,

Düsseldorf-based artist Christian Jendreiko will present the U.S. premiere of:

GOTTESRAUSCHEN (GOD'S WHITE NOISE): Action for Players, Guitars, & Amplifiers on:

Saturday, February 6, 2010, from 7-11 PM. Admission is free.

“Observing myself playing the guitar from a sculptural perspective brought me to the idea to concentrate on shaping the motoric aspects of my playing-motions instead of playing a piece of music […] when you take your instrument and start to play you bring your body into the action. You can listen to your body, to your motions and you can listen to the way you move.”

Born in Germany in 1969 and based in Düsseldorf, Christian Jendreiko is an internationally recognized experimental artist realizing actions with large ensembles of musically trained or untrained performers in novel, site-specific settings.

One of Jendreiko’s starting points was a fundamental question: what would it mean, in the artist’s words, “to free the motion in minimal music from its compulsion towards repetition?” Jendreiko specifically seeks to reconsider acoustics as aspects of how body and mind are constructed. A revised conception of sound has led the artist to explore a practice rooted in inner dynamics, emphasize the necessity to recognize inner motivations, and to move in accordance with it. If Jendreiko’s investigation into how mind and body are related to feedback motivates the theoretical foundation for his compositions, a wholly democratic, decentralized, and sculptural approach to the political characterizes the artist’s philosophy toward actions, which last anywhere from two to seven hours, and are frequently executed by large ensembles. Combining classically trained musicians and untrained performers in nonhierarchical and improvisatory fashion, Jendreiko transforms groups into social sculpture.

For the San Francisco premiere of GOTTESRAUSCHEN (GOD’S WHITE NOISE): Action for Players, Guitars, & Amplifiers, a number of recognized Bay area musicians and artists will perform in the gallery spaces of Baer Ridgway Exhibitions over the course of four hours. Intended as a performance for an indeterminate number of guitarists and amplifiers, and taking its cue from a passage by Friedrich Schiller on man’s relationship to a series of sensual and formal compulsions ("For all beauty is ultimately but a property of ... movement"), GOD’S WHITE NOISE will unfold over a single evening, with guests free to enter, circulate throughout, and remain in the gallery space as long as they wish.

Jendreiko’s actions have been performed at Wesleyan University (2007), Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2007), Kunstverein Nürnberg/Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft (2009), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg (2009), and in various galleries and art institutions throughout Europe. His compositions and sound pieces are included in the permanent collection the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2009, Jendreiko’s composition Füreinander was performed by a large ensemble for the International Düsseldorf Organ Festival. The Düsseldorf Kunstverein has recently published a volume of his writings and artwork, HETEROLOGICS, and Munich based record label Apparent Extent will release a comprehensive box set of his recordings in 2010. As member of the Düsseldorf-based artist collective hobbypopMuseum, Jendreiko has presented exhibitions at Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (2001), Tate Britain, London (2003), Deitch Projects, New York (2005), Deste Foundation, Athens (2005), Herzeliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2007).

Performers will include musicians from a number of San Francisco-based bands, experimental composers, visual artists, faculty, alumni, and current students from Stanford University's graduate program for research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and MFA program, Mills College, and the California College of Arts.

Curator James Merle Thomas is currently completing his PhD in postwar aesthetics, technology, and politics in the Department of Art History at Stanford University, where he is the Curatorial Dissertation Fellow at the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. His current curatorial project, "I'm Sorry, But This is How I Learn" is touring Europe and the United States.