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Caren Golden Fine
Art: Pop Rocks
December 5, 2003 - January 10, 2004
Listeners
2002 + 2004, 6"
x 4" x 2", headphones, wire, and cd player.
Sound
clips from a day in the life of the artist while wearing listeners
emanates from the headphone speakers.
Listen here: 1,
2, 3,
4, 5,
6
Photos by John Parker
Pop Rocks Press Release:
curated by Daria Brit Shapiro & Caren Golden
Jesse Amado, Fia Backstrom, Ray Beldner, iona rozeal brown, William
Cordova, Moyra Davey, Thomas Eller, Erik Hanson, Ryan Humphrey, Christian Marclay, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Gean Moreno,
Ed Osborn, John Parker, Dario Robleto
Exhibition: December 5, 2003 – January 10, 2003
Reception: Friday, December 5, 2003, 6-8PM
Caren Golden Fine Art is pleased to present Pop Rocks, a group exhibition
featuring fifteen artists who investigate the role of music in popular
culture. Pop Rocks is named after a candy which exploded in your mouth
made popular in the eighties. There was a widespread rumor that Pop
Rocks, if eaten while drinking Coca-Cola, would cause one’s stomach
to explode, resulting in death. In the spirit of this rumor, Thomas
Eller’s The Incident (coca-cola), depicts a bottle of Coca-Cola
in various stages of shattering and aids in detonating the exhibition
into an explosion of chaotic energy and sound.
Varying in their approach, their media and their relationship to music
culture, the artists in Pop Rocks use sound and the absence of sound
to express music’s role as a motivating force in both personal
and societal spheres. Passionately air drumming to the beats of an audio
track that the viewer cannot hear, Reuben Lorch-Miller acts out his
private fantasy of rock stardom in his DVD, Right There. Iona Rozeal
Brown’s worms, representative of today’s consumer, attempt
to experience music with their diminished sensory capacities. Examining
the disparity between what we hear and what we see, John
Parker’s Listeners are eyeglasses with headphones in
place of lenses. No music is heard; rather, we hear the sounds of ourselves
stumbling blindly. Ed Osborn inverts the function of two test-tone records,
designed to calibrate sound systems and test the fortitude of their
speakers, by converting the records into speakers themselves. Emitting
the strange sounds of their own recordings, they are essentially testing
their own fidelity.
Depicting music as a commodity, Moyra Davey’s photographs of a
busy record fair portray the vinyl record as a lifeless object, a stark
contrast to the emotive qualities that music can produce. Using the
Beatles’ White Album cover, Christian Marclay embosses a small
excerpt from the lyrics heard on the record. The contents of an album,
and of an era, are distilled down to one poignant phrase: “I didn’t
catch your name”. Cut-up album covers are collaged in Gean Moreno’s
intricate landscapes that swirl with bold colors, while Dario Robleto’s
70’s influenced album covers critique that era with a dark and
satirical twist. Based upon a Warhol image, Ray Beldner’s portrait
of Mick Jagger, executed in dollar bills, is an ironic commentary on
the commodification of music.
William Cordova’s DVD, “You’re Alla Bunch of Fucking
Idiots”, bootleg footage of a hip-hop breakdancing contest overlaid
with the soundtrack of a riot at a Doors concert illustrates the rebellious
behavior that music has inspired over the ages. By using multiple Bruce
Springsteen and Def Leppard album covers, Ryan Humphrey’s “No
Surrender, No Retreat” alludes to the September 11th attacks by
juxtaposing notions of patriotism with mass destruction.
Jesse Amado’s graphite letters reveal the ambiguity of language,
by appropriating the letters from James Brown’s lyrics “Please,
please, please baby please don’t go, I love you so”. Amado
negates actual meaning by converting these lyrics into pure form. Similarly,
Erik Hanson’s drawings feature song titles borrowed from David
Bowie and Blondie. Stripped of their meaning they become graffiti that
floats ambiguously in a dark sky, devoid of any context. Fia Backstrom
presents a laptop computer that randomly generates its own soundtrack,
corresponding to the graphics on the screen. Backstrom transforms the
act of musical composition into something automatic, devoid of human
error or emotion.
For additional information, contact Daria Brit Shapiro at 212.727.8304
or daria@carengolden.com
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