archive
Variations on Aphonia
John ArndtNew Work
February 16 - March 17, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, February 16, 2007, 6-9pm
CHICAGO, IL -- rowlandcontemporary is pleased to present Variations on Aphonia. In an exploration of the visual territory between musical notes, and an investigation into the qualities of negative space, Chicago artist John Arndt combines sculpture, drawings, and audio in an installation that asserts a presence in quietude.
Invoking John Cage's famous 4'33" and other experimental sounds that push the boundaries of music and ask the viewer to expand their encoded notions, Arndt explores the negative and positive space in his work like a composer who shapes a melodic line.
What is the form of absence? What is the shape of silence? Can a void be more interesting than a solid? Arndt's explorations examine how measured rest is equal to blank canvas. Probing the viewer to observe empty space as art, Arndt shifts the attention from what is seen to what is not. In this sense, Arndt's work is never "seen" the same way twice.
One untitled work consisting of a tangled mass of cord and wire sits directly on the gallery floor. The object is the remnants of a disassembled piano, whose sounds accompany the installation, and in turn, define the sound of a piano at the end of its existence. With its antecedents firmly in the dissonant and atonal structure of the avant garde music of the twentieth century, Arndt's sculpture never resolves, rather, the fluctuating harmonic and melodic droning created by various effects upon the cords renders it eternally dissonant.
With his variations, John Arndt challenges the viewer to pay attention to the mute. To hear what is being said when nothing is said at all.
John Arndt received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He recently completed a residency at The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover Utah with a resulting exhibition of that work at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL). Recent exhibitions include Gahlberg Gallery at the College of Dupage (Glen Ellyn, IL), and Suitable (Chicago, IL). This is his first exhibition with rowlandcontemporary.
