REM
In the exhibition „REM“ presented at Bildraum 01, Juliana Herrero juxtaposes visual impressions with sound spaces. The Argentine-born artist pushes the boundaries of provocation, concentrated perception, and the utopian in her interventions. Her installations mark a new conceptual development, for although static, they release kinetic energy through sound vibrations in a dialogue between analog and digital technology.
In the work A white Sound, the grilles and the sea (2016), Juliana Herrero deciphers visual information from the outside world and transforms it into an auditory experience and back again. This extremely intimate and subtle work takes its origins in acoustic dissections of the soundscapes of her Argentinian hometown. Spontaneously filtered sequences are assembled by the artist into experimental cyanotypes without analytical deliberation. Here, Juliana Herrero asks about the specific sound of the public and the private, how can what is perceived change perception, how does „freedom“ sound and how does „compulsion“ sound? In the current work Just another series of BLUES (2017) she further penetrates to an emotional level. Made of watercolor and sea salt, the works on paper represent the essence of Herrero’s musicality and, in their abstraction, create an inner experience of sound for the attentive viewer.
Based on this great sensibility, the artist traces a wide-ranging spectrum of contemporary communication, connecting, alienating, and allowing her results to unfold through a variety of media. The video work Invisible Cities, for example, accompanied by the rhythm of a heartbeat and interrupted by snoring sounds, leads into a „macro“ spectrum of Eastern European cities. Invisible Cities directs the viewer’s gaze to the ground, bumping into the subsoil, jostling, probing, falling deeper into realities and hurrying into the subconscious. The work combines everyday elements of the street with reworked political maps of Eastern Europe and Patagonia offset with imaginary landscape shots. Without any trace of coherent visual clues, bodily sounds form the only true constant, transforming Herrero’s invisible cities into organic reflections of actual artifacts and imagined associations.
In Bildraum 01, Juliana Herrero skillfully combines fine metallic lines, filigree nets, delicate reflections, and a quiet sound with fictional cities full of stories, with traces of memories that enchant us in a whispering way.
(2017) REM
Solo exhibition, Bildraum 01, Vienna (AT)
Exhibition views, © Eva Kelety | Bildrecht Wien 2017
http://kelety.at/
Featured works:
A WHITE SOUND, THE GRILLES AND THE SEA
FROM ONE CHRYSTALLON TO THE PAMPIA
JUST ANOTHER SERIES OF BLUES
INVISIBLE CITIES
REVIEW gallerytalk.net
30. Mai 2017 • Text by Anna Möslinger
