20 December 2007 – 24 February 2008

SUSAN PHILIPSZ

Susan Philipsz uses her art to investigate the sculptural and psychological potential of sound. At her shows, exhibition halls remain empty, altered instead on a perceptive level by sound installations which provoke new interpretations of the space in which they are to be found. The public experiences her journey through fleeting time as the music ebbs and flows. The fullness of sound within the emptiness of space comes back to the listener, radically aware nowof their position, their location. The work is best owed with a strange sense of physicality, achieved somehow through an immaterial sensation. Philipsz employs a cappella interpretations of the traditional popular repertoire, with a voice that, whilst trained, is by no means professional, which draws us in with its familiarity whilst simultaneously making the original source seem ever more distant.

As far as the psychological implications of her work are concerned, by reinterpreting recognisable pieces of music, Philipsz cleverly plays with our collective memory. Through her use of references to the original contexts from which she takes her songs or their lyrics, she seeks to emotionally provoke the listener. Her intervention has aspecial relationship to the production of subjectivity: it strives to alter individual identity, manipulating its ability to remain tied down, listening with the disturbing uncertainty of not knowing where to look in this supposed space fit for contemplation or provoking an emotional response, a movement which complicates this emptiness withits sense of loss or a longing for a chance of recuperation.

Address

CGAC
c/ Valle Inclán s/n
15704 Santiago de Compostela
phone +34 81 54 66 29
http://www.cgac.org/

Opening Hours

Tuesday - Saturday
11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Sunday
11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Closed on Monday

Within 10 days
starting exhibitions
ending exhibitions