ART-PRESENTATION: Olivier Beer-Household Gods

Olivier Beer is a graduate of Academy of Contemporary Music and Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Beer is interested in the relationships between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture. Since 2007 he has been designing performances where choirs reveal the acoustic properties of pre-existing architectural spaces.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive

Olivier Beer has translated his research into fascinating performances in which spectators take part by the mere fact of their presence, and he makes sculptures and videos that embody, literally or metaphorically, the plastic expression of this subtle relationship and the way the human body experiences it. Within and alongside his work with sound, Oliver Beer creates subtle and diverse sculptural, installation and film projects whose provenance sometimes seems biographical; but in which his play with universal concerns draws on shared emotions and perceptions. A new sound installation and sculptural works by Oliver Beer, is on presentation at his solo exhibition “Household Gods” which reflects the artist’s current exploration of the relationship between sound and form, and the innate musicality of the physical world. The “Household Gods” of the title are physical objects, placed on plinths in a whitened room and idolized to the point where they can sing. In the main space of the gallery, they are given voice and raised to the status of household divinities. Beer uses microphones to amplify the ambient sound ricocheting within the internal spaces of the objects, creating gentle acoustic feedback loops, that allow us to hear the innate sound of each object. These notes are determined by volume and form of empty space, and have remained unchanged since the day each piece was created. Like his sound installations, Beer’s new black two-dimensional sculpture confronts perceptions of space, sound and materiality. Intensely personal and symbolic items from Beer’s life become drawings of themselves and are ossified in infinite empty space. The white pictorial plane of Beer’s earlier two-dimensional sculptures intimated a perfect modernist flatness; for the first time the deep black background of these new works implies an endless depth. Expanding his repertoire to include vessels and other humble objects from his daily life, new facets of the physical world become Beer’s colour, line and texture. These objects have outlived their cultural context; the diverse, predominantly domestic materials are given iconographic status. Tuning pegs from Beer’s own deconstructed guitar interact with laughing gas canisters collected from outside his studio and fragments from his first metronome. Vessels, which once articulated musical notes, shatter and spread into constellation forms, investing items from the immediate material world with sublime value. His grandmother’s enamelled jug, which once resonated at a perfect low B♭is silenced into a visualisation of its aural abilities. Beer’s immersive live performances extend this enquiry. To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, his latest performance “Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me)” presented the day of the opening, in a new staging. Originally developed by the artist during his residency at the Sydney Opera House for the Sydney Biennale in 2018, Beer worked closely with the singers, asking them to recall their earliest childhood songs and incorporating these melodies into his score. In the composition, the pair of singers join their lips in a tight seal to create a single mouth cavity, allowing them to explore the resonant frequencies of each other’s faces as they unite to become a single instrument.

Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 rue Debelleume, Paris, Duration: 12/1-16/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10;00-19:00, https://ropac.net