Working once again with curator Germano Celant at the Venice Biennale, the Prada Foundation announced its “Art or Sound” exhibition is slated to run in the Serenissima at the Ca’ Corner della Regina palazzo, from June 7 to November 3.
The expo explores the relationship between art and sound through various types of musical instruments, and questions when they are works of art or sound objects. It will offer a reinterpretation of musical instruments as both sculptural and visual entity, while eschewing their unnecessary categorization as one or the other, and also examine how the roles of the artist and musician are sometimes blurred.
The exhibition will occupy 1,000 square meters across the ground floor and two main floors of the Venetian palazzo Ca’ Corner della Regina, which has been restored as part of the Prada Foundation’s efforts to renovate the historic building.
Organized chronologically, the exhibition will begin with musical instruments made from unusual and precious materials in the 17th Century (by Michele Antonio Grandi and Giovanni Battista Cesarini), as well as instruments like lyres and automata by Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz in the 18th Century.
Moving on to the 19th Century are examples of automated musical instruments and mechanical devices, exploring light and color, by the historical avant-garde set, including Futurist artist Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori (1913) and some of Giacomo Balla’s objects.
The 20th Century section will comprise instruments and works by composers such as Alvin Lucier and John Cage; the sound boxes of the Sixties, by Robert Morris and Nam June Paik; kinetic sculptures by artists like Takis and Stephan von Huene, and sound installations including Robert Rauschenberg’s “Oracle” (1962-1965) and Laurie Anderson’s “Handphone Table” (1978). On display will also be pianos created by Arman, Richard Artschwager and Joseph Beuys, and hybrid instruments like the guitars and the violins of Ken Butler and the banjos of William T. Wiley— which are more like sculptures that happen to be playable instruments.
Fondazione Prada, the nonprofit arm of the Italian luxury label, is also publishing a book to accompany the exhibition, with essays and other treatises by a long list of musicologists, visual artists, musicians, composers and art historians, such as Jo Applin, Luciano Chessa, Christopoh Cox, Geeta Dayal, Patrick Feaster, Christoph E. Hänggi, Bart Hopkin, Douglas Kahn, Alan Licht, Andrea Lissoni, Noel Lobley, Deirdre Loughridge, Simone Menegoi, Holly Rogers, Jonathan Sterne, David Toop, John Tresch, Eric de Visscher and Rob Young.
To see highlights from the upcoming exhibition, click on the slideshow.
