Sphere Packing: Bach
/Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sphere Packing: Bach, 2018. Credit: Guy L'Heureux.
Until September, 2018 – The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) has the great privilege of hosting the largest-ever solo show in Canada or the United States by Montreal-based and internationally- acclaimed artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Unstable Presence is a major survey of Lozano-Hemmer’s workover the past 18 years, bringing together 21 pieces, including several large-scale immersive installations. In his work, Lozano-Hemmer draws on science, technology, politics, sociology, poetry, music and art history, nourishing a rich conversation with the public.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Unstable Presence is co-organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The exhibition is co-curated by Lesley Johnstone,Curator and Head of Exhibitions and Education, François LeTourneux, Associate Curator at the MAC and Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at SFMOMA. The exhibition will travel to Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico, in 2019 and to the SFMOMA, from April 25 to September 6, 2020.
Music lovers will be delighted and alarmed by Sphere Packing: Bach, 2018 — a new work by the artist presented for the very first time — and Sphere Packing: Wagner, 2013. These installations are two in a series of 17 works that concentrate the entire musical production of a composer into a single multi-channel sphere. The black-glazed porcelain sphere dedicated to Richard Wagner (13 centimetres comprising 110 channels of sound) hangs from the ceiling and visitors have to bring their ear up close in order to hear the individual compositions. The far more prolific composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, required 1,128 individual
