Artists: Carmela De Falco - Magdalen Wong - Orsola Zane - Semin Hong

Carmela De Falco, Semin Hong, Magdalen Wong, Orsola Zane
Curated by Giulia Pollicita and Clara Rodorigo

I often find myself eavesdropping on other people’s chats when sitting alone outside at bars, on the street where youngsters gather, waiting for a friend at the restaurant. I often find myself living out to the soundtrack of what would otherwise be lost in the background and fancy living other people’s lives, knowing what they think, what they do, what they want. It’s not that I want to intrude on others’ privacy or intimacy, but rather the spirited sense of being alive and being tirelessly curious about what happens around me, with the most genuine desire to open to others, welcome them in my life and see what they bring along. I have always been like this. When I was a kid, as an only child, my parents or grandparents, during sunny days, would bring me to the park to play outdoors and go on the carousels, and I would always ask other kids around their names to play together.

I have always had a particular fascination for other’s lives, hinting at the dim lights glimmering from the windows on the street, watching blithesome friends hanging around while walking on my own, feeling joyful for them, enjoying my pace and solitary remit, knowing I have been the wallflower on the backdrop of a moment in their night just as many time as who knows how many people feeling alike have been the same to my gleeful moments with friends. Growing old, my sheer curiosity about other people transformed into something else. Not too late, after I was small enough to ask other kids their names to start playing together shamelessly, I drew my attention to those who silently stood in the background, observing the world around, trying to go unnoticed—just like I did.

While this transformed into an implicit rebellion in my teenage years, it soon started to shape into a systematic attitude to look where most people would have never looked, stare in the opposite direction from where my peers were looking, falling in love with the underdogs, with the defeated, with the antiheroes in the stories. With the romantic side of failure, with the loud quietness that sprinkles our days and shifts our sights, turning upside down most common perspectives, mainstream beliefs, and outdated principles.

Wars ravage within, outside, and among us. The right-wing is surging again. I cannot see any stability for the next twenty years. World leaders of the major countries worldwide don't even show up at the summit to face global warming—nor even genocides, famines, or poorness. We are powerless against an ongoing genocide live streamed on our smartphones’ screens. I am broken. This world is. Tuning into the background noise is for us like a recipe for surviving this tangled, wicked mess.

The works on view share a sense of conflation between internal fears and external realities. Mobilising a search for intimacy, which also coincides with a quest for a common language and communication, they trace a lost proximity against the havoc of this epoch. background noise was born as a quest into the possibilities of sound and music to communicate what words cannot. The project adjusted itself by suggesting something different from what we were initially looking for, indicating an unexpected route that unfolds through the works of these four artists, at various stages in their careers, with diverse stories and paths.

Carmela De Falco’s environmental installation reflecting, reflecting, the voice transforms the gallery into a space of relational echo and memory. Minimal marks on walls form a primordial score, recalling ancient linguistic symbols and the archeoacoustic studies of reverberating caves. In the accompanying performance, singers mirror and distort each other’s vocalisations, transforming their bodies into vessels of collective memory. The space resonates as an architectural body, embodying both ancient and contemporary modes of connection.

Magdalen Wong introduces us to an utterly artificial landscape and an imagined, non-existent window. Blending consumerist symbols and staged realities she questions authenticity and explores the boundaries between artifice and experience. Through irony and subtle subversion, Wong’s work invites viewers to reconsider the constructed nature of what we perceive as natural or authentic, challenging assumptions about beauty, nostalgia, and the ways we frame our surroundings.

Delving further into the complex interplay between external constructs and internal reflections, Orsola Zane’s paintings address the psychological tension between observation and judgment. Caïn et l'oeil and Cain at the Fishmonger’s draw inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s Film and Victor Hugo’s La Conscience, exploring the unease of perpetual scrutiny. The futile act of locking a door underscores the inescapability of the observer’s gaze, as the viewer is already within the room. This imagery evokes a claustrophobic sense of surveillance, where privacy is an illusion. In Cain at the Fishmonger’s, this internal paranoia extends into the external world. Here, lifeless mantis shrimps, with their double sets of eyes—both real and painted —transform into silent jurors, projecting judgment onto mundane interactions.

Semin Hong’s works Home Riddles and Yesterday the stars woke me up shift the focus from communal resonance to personal displacement and mirrors the nomadic search for stability in a transient world. Engaging with the gallery’s window, it frames a glimpse into an ever-changing landscape that feels both familiar and elusive, composed of varied fragments. The tapestry recalls a puzzle pieced together from disparate elements to evoke a sense of discovery and connection, inviting viewers to confront a longing for home and the melancholic beauty of impermanence.

Background noise is a group exhibition that is triggered by the dissonant soundtrack of our reality, oversaturated with content, digital interconnectedness, real-time fake news, fast-paced communications, and high-speed, low-fare transport. By paradox, it reacts and answers to this scenario imagining a parallel world, sheltering in intimacy, a sense of dwelling in, and uncanniness.

The exhibition title is borrowed from the homonym book by the American artist and sound theorist Brandon LaBelle and his journey through sound and its social, psychological, and spatial implications. Examining how musicians and artists sought to disclose sound’s potential to spill into the global and interpersonal space, LaBelle’s inquiry has shed light on the attempt to seek unspoken communication strategies. Exploring sound’s impact and relation with the elusive slime of architecture and city crowds––swirling by just outside the generous Des Bain gallery’s window––, or calling the audiences into play, background noise is the marginal echo that exposes the foreground’s aspects that remain concealed from master narrations. The uncontrolled vitality of the neglected silently leaks through the wall.

london, milan, and naples
november 2024
giulia pollicita, clara rodorigo