05 Sep Raised voices
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/82547-raised-voices
Sprüth Magers is pleased to present Raised voices, an exhibition by Anthony McCall
featuring the UK premiere of a new solid light work alongside drawings from
throughout his career. The exhibition coincides with two major solo shows of McCall’s
work at Tate Modern (until 27 April 2025) and Guggenheim Bilbao (until 11 October
2024).
At the centre of the exhibition is Raised voices (2020) a large-scale immersive
installation comprised of digital projection, sound and haze. McCall’s ‘solid light works’
occupy a space between cinema, sculpture and drawing, with beams of light creating
sculptural forms as they are projected through mist within the space. The viewer
becomes an active participant in the work, dissected by an undulating light that slowly
shifts and changes.
In Raised voices, there are two competing and intersecting forms within the horizontal
projection; an incomplete ellipse that varies in its diameter, and a straight diagonal line
that splinters in two as it turns through 180 degrees. The forms develop according to a
precise durational structure, shifting at a pace that can sometimes be indiscernible,
yet presenting itself continuously within the conical field of light.
The work also features a soundtrack, composed in collaboration with the musician
David Grubbs. McCall and Grubbs first met in 2007, their first collaborative work being
Leaving (With Two-Minute Silence) (2009–10). This was McCall’s first solid light work
including sound since the 1970s, the soundtracks of which were previously the dronelike mechanical purring of the 16mm projector. The subsequent use of digital
projectors, with their relative silence, gave an absence of sound, and it was through
collaboration with Grubbs that McCall sought to fill this aural void.
Like Leaving (with two-minute silence) the soundtrack to Raised voices similarly
utilises the sounds of the urban environment, though this time to more intimidating
effect. Across the sixteen-minute cycle of the film, there are four sections of sound
each of which lasts for thirty seconds. In the far distance a riot seems to be unfolding
as a chorus of sirens and car-horns make themselves felt and the faintly discernible
roars of a baying crowd are heard, the eponymous raised voices, themselves
supplanted by the rumbling engine of a low-flying helicopter. Though the work remains primarily silent, with the sonic events occurring far beyond the gallery walls, the
repeated interruptions become unsettling.
Presented alongside Raised voices are a number of works on paper that give an
insight into McCall’s working processes. His drawings function as both a mathematical
formula for the works as well as the two-dimensional working out of their threedimensional volumetric form, evidencing the meticulous planning that goes into each
installation. A series of seven charcoal drawings for Raised voices show the
‘footprints’ of the projection at seven consecutive moments, freeze-frames that return
the light projection to its graphic referent.
Anthony McCall (*1946, St. Paul’s Cray) lives in New York City. He is currently the
subject of two major solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (until 27 April 2025), and
Guggenheim, Bilbao (until 11 October 2024), as well as an exhibition opening at MAAT,
Lisbon in October 2024. Previous solo exhibitions include Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, NY (2019), Pioneer Works, Brooklyn and The Hepworth Wakefield (both 2018),
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2016), LAC Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano (2015),
Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2014), Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Les Abattoirs,
Toulouse; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (all
2013), Project Room, New York; Tate Modern, London and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
(all 2012), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2011) and Serpentine Gallery,
London (2007).
Source Credit: Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by . Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/82547-raised-voices