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Artist: Carsten Nicolai

autonomo is German artist and musician Carsten Nicolai’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.
 

autonomo is German artist and musician Carsten Nicolai’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.












At its center, the exhibition features a large, intensive audio-mechanical installation, ‘autonomo.’ As nine orbicular bell plates in four sizes hang like pendulums from the ceiling of Gallery One, an autonomously operating ball machine projects black balls into space, on occasion hitting one of the plates. A randomized audio space is achieved, triggered by a self- operating ‘score.’

Drawing on ideas of sound in relation to the work of the late composer Iannis Xenakis, Nicolai creates a zone where the application of mathematics, physics, statistics, game theory, and randomized processes play an autonomous role in musical arrangement and composition. autonomo's audio scape turns the gallery space into a three-dimensional instrument where the bow truss ceiling of the gallery functions as the work’s acoustic box. Sounds are produced as an effect of random circumstances that include the intermitting speeds of the balls as they hit the plates, the angle of the projectiles as they bounce off a target and ricochet to hit another, the movement and time lapse of the projection machine, and the spatial and architectural characteristics of the room that generates the acoustics.

In direct relation to Nicolai's large-scale sound installation autonomo, the exhibition features five paintings from a new series entitled formula along the exterior wall of Gallery One. These paintings are studies that belong to a larger ensemble of works on the translations of mathematical formulas into graphs. Manipulated by the artist, diverse formulas are transmitted onto gesso-primed canvases and serve as tools for the drawing process.

Born 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Carsten Nicolai is an artist and musician based in Berlin. He is part of an artistic generation that has worked intensively in the transitional area between music, art, and science. Recent international exhibitions include documenta X and the 49th and 50th Venice Biennales. Nicolai has received worldwide acclaim in extensive solo and group exhibitions and his artistic œuvre echoes through his practice as a musician, where he produces under the pseudonym Alva Noto. Nicolai’s diverse musical projects include remarkable collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Ryoji Ikeda (cyclo.), among others. Nicolai co-scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s most recent film The Revenant, which has received nominations for the Golden Globe, BAFTA, Grammy, and the Critics’ Choice Awards.