Sound has Legs (part 2)

From June 5th to July 5th 2008
1201 Saint-Laurent boulevard
Opening and concert :: june 5 – 5 p.m.

The SAT[Gallery] presents the second part of Sound has Legs by showing a new series of prints by the contemporary artist Jérôme Fortin, veritable graphic scores of musical sessions, and an audio-visual projection of the artist Jean-Pierre Aubé, an interpretation of the « travel diary » of a journey through space.

Sound has Legs is a tribute to John Cage’s famous phrase “Sound has no legs to stand on” which refers to the use of music as ethereal support to choreographic pieces. Both parts of this exhibition allow us to observe the sound and its paraphernalia (amplifying system, invented instruments, loudspeakers, CDs and vinyl records) in an art gallery, an improbable place where one would found them.

This two-fold exhibition presents two artists who manipulate sound by treating it like any other material such as light, picture, computer data, wood and other materials. The first part presented from May 1rst to June 1rst sound archives from the interdisciplinary group Sonde and the first musically-luminous piece by young composer Nathan McNinch. Here is the second part.

Jérôme Fortin : Ostinatos

Jérôme Fortin is a persevering artist. Patiently, haunted by the series and repetition, he cuts and folds a multitude of coloured sheets of paper collected on his travels. Assembled into concentric circles and glued together, they are the silent material of thirty circular matrices and thirty prints the diameter of a 33 1/3 vinyl record, all of which are on exibit here. The fruit of the artist Jérôme Fortin’s and the curator Eric Mattson’s shared passion for music, this exhibition also includes thirty signed and numbered compact discs, each bearing one of the images of the matrices and prints. These discs, which will be available for listening during the exibition, contain previously unrecorded material by Montreal electronic music composers performed before a live.

Launch – Concert :: 5 p.m.

The concert opening the second part of the Sound Has Legs exhibition allows us to appreciate how the artist Jean-Pierre Aubé adapted the sounds gathered from our surroundings. For this event, special guest Vromb, a self-taught Montreal artist with an international reputation will be presenting some of his pieces. These are mainly the result of a passion for TV shows from the 50s, science fiction movies and societies built by insects. This seemed like a perfect match for an interstellar space lover.

Eric Mattson is an independent curator specialized in sound art. This exhibition project follows White Line Light by the German collective Raster-Noton, presented at the SAT Gallery over the course of the Summer 2007.

Eric Mattson would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the SAT Gallery for their support and Nicole Gingras.