1 ottobre - 20 novembre 2011, London
Anri Sala (born 1974, Albania) is a leading contemporary artist working primarily in film. For his exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, Sala will present a series of echoing works in which sound relocates throughout the space. A succession of different cycles will draw the visitor through the Gallery on an ever-changing course. Winner of the Young Artist Prize at the 2001 Venice Biennale, Sala is known for his exhibitions that question our relationship to moving image and that highlight the influence of sound and language on the creation of physical and political space. Most of the works presented at the Serpentine either use live performance as their starting point or could possibly lead to a performance. Two films deconstruct and reconfigure a well-known punk song: in Le Clash, 2010, performers outside a derelict concert hall in Bordeaux play new renditions of the song Should I Stay or Should I Go through a barrel organ and a music box. While in a new film of 2011, (as yet untitled), figures among the ruins of the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City randomly insert fragments of a musical score into a barrel organ, creating a disjointed version of the same song. The barrel organ’s perforated score will be carved through the walls of the gallery, creating openings to the outside, allowing the sounds of the park and the gallery to merge. In a second pairing, the 2009 film Answer Me makes visible the distinctive echo of an abandoned surveillance station dome built in Berlin in the mid-1950s by the American inventor and theorist Buckminster Fuller, while a snare drum in the Serpentine’s entrance plays to the inaudible low frequencies of the film, extending the dome’s echo further into the gallery space. Concurrent with the Serpentine Gallery exhibition, Artangel will present a film by Anri Sala. Info: www.serpentinegallery.org - www.artangel.org.uk