Lesson Nº 1 + The Ascension
Glenn Branca has always been a musician positioned halfway between the role of avant-garde composer and that of a rock musician. A pupil and disciple of the masters of American minimalism such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he has always had to fight against prejudice and fierce criticism. His position was certainly uncomfortable, too academic for rock fans and too “politically incorrect” for academics. In fact, Branca was trying to unhinge all the limits imposed by the rigid schemes of the avant-garde, aware of the fact that those who want to be truly avant-garde should have no limits. John Cage was also able to criticize him, even calling him a fascist ( Luciano Berio also did so for all minimalists) for the excessive rigidity of his compositions, even though he recognized his innovative power. After having created his best known album, The Ascension (1981), a true monument of maximalism played with a classical rock formation (guitars, bass and drums), he tries to approach a different format, the Symphony, as always halfway between rock and academia. Branca will like the experiment and will re-propose it several times in the following decades, to date there are sixteen symphonies (not all recordings are available). Here is how young Branca’s ensemble appeared to the American composer John Adams in one of his first live performances of the First Symphony: “Branca’s event that I listened to at the Japan Center Theater in San Francisco in 1981 was one of his symphonies for guitar . The group didn’t look very different from thousands of other independent or alternative rock bands of the time: guys in jeans and worn t-shirts busy with cables while maintaining that typical distracted expression of rock musicians.

高谷史郎
史郎の高谷
La chambre claire
La Chambre Claire (or Camera Lucida) is a show built up from precise, symmetrical movements, inviting spectators to embark on a thought-provoking journey into their most intimate and personal territory. In this, his first solo work as creative artist and director, Shiro Takatani pays homage to the French writer Roland Barthes and his essay on photography, La chambre claire (1980). The result is a performance that blends theatre, the art of movement and installation to compose a great fresco full of subtle, elegant minimalist images that advance towards an aesthetic climax. Reflecting on photography and memory, the production invites us to embark upon an intimate, solitary journey to look inside ourselves and formulate a personal interpretation of what we see.
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La Chambre Claire (oder Camera Lucida) ist eine Show, die aus präzisen, symmetrischen Bewegungen aufgebaut ist und die Zuschauer zu einer zum Nachdenken anregenden Reise in ihr intimstes und persönlichstes Gebiet einlädt. In seiner ersten Soloarbeit als kreativer Künstler und Regisseur huldigt Shiro Takatani dem französischen Schriftsteller Roland Barthes und seinem Aufsatz über Fotografie, La chambre claire (1980). Das Ergebnis ist eine Performance, die Theater, Bewegungskunst und Installation miteinander verbindet, um ein großartiges Fresko voller subtiler, eleganter minimalistischer Bilder zu komponieren, die sich einem ästhetischen Höhepunkt nähern. Die Produktion reflektiert Fotografie und Erinnerung und lädt uns ein, eine intime, einsame Reise zu unternehmen, um in uns selbst zu schauen und eine persönliche Interpretation dessen zu formulieren, was wir sehen.
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La Chambre Claire（またはCamera Lucida）は、正確で対称的な動きから構築されたショーであり、観客を招待して、最も親密で個人的な領域への示唆に富む旅に出ます。この中で、クリエイティブアーティスト兼ディレクターとしての彼の最初のソロ作品である高谷史郎は、フランスの作家ロラン・バルトと彼の写真に関するエッセイ、ラ・シャンブル・クレア（1980）に敬意を表しています。その結果、劇場、動きの芸術、インスタレーションを融合させて、美的クライマックスに向けて前進する繊細でエレガントなミニマリストのイメージに満ちた素晴らしいフレスコ画を構成するパフォーマンスが生まれました。写真と記憶を反映して、この作品は私たちを親密で孤独な旅に乗り出し、自分自身の内部を見て、私たちが見ているものの個人的な解釈を定式化するように誘います。

Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin
HYBE’s Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin re-illuminates the minimalist fluorescent light tubes of Dan Flavin from the 1960s, through digital technology. Experimenting with light and its effect, Flavin explored artistic meaning in relationships between light, situation, and environment. The readymade fluorescent light fixtures he used created space divided and adjusted by light and composition, offering a newly structured space with light. HYBE’s work expands the logic of Flavin by reinforcing the physical property of light through interactive media. It presents an escape from traditional lighting, as light and color changes when touched by viewers. Lighting here is divided into front and back, and colors are programmed to maintain complementary colors. The front lighting constantly interacts with colors on a back wall through visual contrast and mixture. A random change and diffusion of light with the involvement of viewers provokes tension extending and segmenting space, turning space into a forum for emotional perceptual experience.

cellule No. 5
Absalon’s best known works, the Cellules, rewrite Cezanne’s “treat nature as the cylinder, the sphere and the cone” to read “treat architecture as the cell, the bunker and the turret.” Not that the Cellules are straightforwardly architecture: they equally evoke Minimalist sculpture, Matt Mullican’s maquettes, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbauen and the Concrete sculptures of George Vantongerloo. But the model that the Cellules most overtly evoke is the monastic cell. The Cellules were fabricated in wood, cardboard and plaster, and painted entirely white; their average proportions are roughly those of a caravan, and the catalogue informs us that there is always an area in which one can stand up. Their interiors are fitted–fitted rather than furnished–with unobtrusive minimal representations of desks, seats, beds, etc.

Odysseus und die Badegäste
Weit entfernt von den traditionellen pastoralen Szenen, die durch den Titel der Ausstellung hervorgerufen werden, hat der in New York lebende Künstler im Museum für kykladische Kunst in Athen eine helle und minimalistische Serie kinetischer Skulpturen beschworen. Für die neuen Werke ließ sich der Künstler von Ancient inspirieren Griechenland. Dies geschah nicht nur durch die Titel seiner Arbeit, die sich mit den Namen von Charakteren aus The Odyssey befassen, sondern auch durch die Erforschung der Eigenschaften der Protagonisten. Abstrakt und rätselhaft bringt Paul Chan die philosophische Verbindung des antiken griechischen Denkens kunstvoll mit eine moderne und zuordenbare neue Umgebung. Odysseus ‘Drang, nach dem Trojanischen Krieg in seine Heimat zurückzukehren, und die Art und Weise, wie er die Reise steuert, werden zu einer ergreifenden Metapher für zeitgenössische Erfahrungen.

Concrete Storm
On first impression, visitors experience solid forms, which draw on minimalist motifs and underscore the stable properties of concrete. While wearing the HoloLens, viewers enter a mixed reality, enlivened by responsive holograms that augment the physical environment of the installation. With Concrete Storm, DRIFT explores the layer between the parallel worlds, whereby the real and the virtual worlds co-exist. People’s attention is now constantly divided between these two worlds in which they coexist. The artists believe that combining these two seemingly separate worlds they can study the unlimited possibilities of the unstoppable evolution. Concrete Storm expands the boundaries of the digital world, freed from screens, and integrated into the fabric of physical existence.

ДЖОН МАК-КРАКЕН
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
STAR, INFINITE, DIMENSION, AND ELECTRON

John McCracken’s work embodies a threshold of physical matter and infinite mind/space. In his own words, this ‘character,’ of his work has been indefinable and difficult to write about as an integral whole. Typically referred to as one of the leading West Coast counterparts to the Minimalist regime of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt and Robert Bladen, McCracken’s work extends the architecture of Minimalism, complicates the surface of simulated or real machine production, and reflects a mysticism of transcendence.

THINK AND SENSE

Under the theme of Zen, this artwork represents a part of the philosophy of Zen with three-dimensional data created with photogrammetry technology composed of the most minimalistic landscape of “dots” and the soundscape of “undulations,” with the cooperation of Toryo Ito, vice priest of Ryosokuin, Kennin-ji Tacchu temple, Kyoto. The generated image reflecting the environmental information of the exhibition space creates “interaction between the environment and the image,” just like the trees and leaves swinging in the silence in the garden of a Zen temple.

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Credit Concept / Technical Direction: Shuhei Matsuyama Point Cloud System Design:Takamitsu Masumi Sound Design: Intercity-Express (Tetsuji Ohno) Photogrammetry Shooting: Naoya Takebe Photogrammetry Engineering: Katsuya Sakuma

colormirror dornbirn
Regine Schumann is a minimalist artist who works with Light Art, initially inspired by Color Field Painting and artists as Mark Rothko, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Schumann’s boxes and installations are made of acrylic colour plates especially produced for her. Her work is more than just Concrete Art. Conceptualized as emotive spaces, Schumann’s colour– lled light rooms provoke intense feelings of something otherworldly. Her minimalistic approach affects everything from her choice of materials to the way she plays with form and colour.

Satyagraha
Portrait Trilogy:Einstein; Akhnaten; Gandhi
composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance DeJong.
Loosely based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, it forms the second part of Glass’s “Portrait Trilogy” of operas about men who changed the world, which includes Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten.
Glass’s style can broadly be described as minimalist.
Opera in Sanskrit

More is less
Franck Scurti réinterprète un tableau de Paul Gauguin , le Christ Jaune (1889), sous la forme d’une installation qui ressemble à une chapelle.
« More is Less », dont le titre prend le contrepied de la thèse de l’architecte moderniste et minimaliste Mies van der Rohe —Less is more—, revendique le glissement de sens, des valeurs. L’artiste n’en fait pas une œuvre à charge, mais une critique de notre société.

The ineffable Gardener
“Loris nurtures a strong attraction to the composition made by fusing life and art. In his creations, he often includes segments from different scientific fields, for example chemistry and cutting edge technology. Following this philosophical line, one of the main ingredients and vital conceptions in his work is the notion of the organic element. This notion serves to a double purpose, with intention to explore a certain object and his relevance in the material world, but also to emphasize the minimalist approach in art making.”Hugo Hess