ロルフ·ユリウス

music for the eyes

source: cortexathletico

Rolf Julius was born in 1939 in northern Germany, where he received classical training in the fine arts. In the late 1970s, he gradually discovered certain contemporary composers (in particular La Monte Young, at festivals and on the radio), and became increasingly involved in acoustic performances which he gave in public parks and at alternative venues. In the early 1980s, Rolf Julius was thus already laying the foundations for a body of work in which acoustic space–sound–would have priority. In various experimental ways he explored the possibilities offered by sound broadcasting techniques, but even at this early stage (and this would be a constant factor in his approach) the works were developing with an on-going concern for the relationship with the space of the world, and with nature.
The years 1983-1984 marked a significant moment in Rolf Julius’s life. He went to live in New York, where he met most of the important artists and composers involved with the experimental avant-garde, in particular John Cage, but Takehisa Kosugi, too, who would henceforth be a veritable master for him. The company he kept during that period of intellectual and artistic ferment in the United States enabled Julius to compare his own short personal history with the history that had been taking shape on the far side of the Atlantic for more than 20 years. His work was now no longer isolated, and as soon as he was back in Europe, it found a new audience. But it was in Japan that his work would be very swiftly recognized and given an enthusiastic welcome. In Japan, the artist was regularly invited for both concert-performances and exhibitions, where he had a chance to show his drawings and sculptures. But his relationship with Japan was no coincidence: there is in Julius Rolf’s work an extreme preoccupation with formal precision and elegance, which also has to do with the place that the void occupies in his works. (Here we can see an obvious link with classical Japanese culture. The connection with the contemporary period recurs in his way of incorporating wood and everyday kitchen receptacles as sound diffusers, but above all through the many opportunities offered him to install his “small music”. (Small Music is the overall title that the artist gives to his work as a whole in these traditional gardens).
Julius’s work was shown for the first time in France in 1980, in Paris (Music for the eyes, l’ARC, City of Paris Museum of Modern Art), then at the La Criée Art Centre in Rennes (1988); the artist has also been regularly exhibited in Grenoble (Broken Music, Le Magasin, 1989-1900), Lyon (Musique en scène, 1996), Dijon (FRAC Bourgogne, 2001) and Paris (Lara Vincy Gallery, 1997 and 2002) in solo shows, and at contemporary music festivals. The largest ever exhibition of his work was at the FRAC Limousin in 2003. His works are in many public French collections.
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source: estaticit

Rolf Julius: Julius
“I like music that circles the present”: thus the German artist Rolf Julius expresses his personal approach to Sound Art, of which he is one of the acknowledged masters. Since 1980 he has realized countless sound installations for museums and art galleries in the United States, in Japan, Europe and Canada.
This show – which follows last february solo exhibition at FRAC-Bourgogne in Dijon, the “Visual Sound” group show held in march at the Pittsburgh Mattress Factory and the current show at the Kassel Kunsthalle Fridericianum – is a unique chance in Italy to directly experience a work which resolves its own complexity in the simple, natural beauty of a soundscape.

Julius invites us to experience the vision of sound, listening with the eyes. Neither more nor less.
From “Musik für die augen” (Music for the eyes, 1981) to the most recent “Large piano piece”, Rolf Julius’ work, while finding expression in a wide range of ways, is clearly moving in one direction. In many of his works little CD players transmit sounds so as to buzz the membranes of variously sized loudspeakers turned to face upwards. These sounds shake the powded pigments covering the loudspeakers as if they were alive, provoking small coloured earthquakes. The loudspeaker membranes convey a physical component of sound, its very vibrations, which make its acting visible.
Julius also integrates these loudspeakers with other raw materials, such as stones or water, and diverse devices, such as glass or metal sheets, clay pots, bowls, japaneze cups, woks, which resonate or act as sound diffusers. Through these elements, supporting the music diffused by loudspeakers, the conceived sound becomes concrete. They reveal the sound, act as traps for the eye. Attracting the viewer’s glance, they allow her/him to hear through the organ of sight what otherwise would eventually be perceived as a noise, due not only to the low volume but to a so-called perceptive supremacy of the eye. Approaching the works, the listener-viewer is able to distinguish and make sense of the music diffused by the speakers. For Julius this experience of the listening has a concreteness which opposes the abstractness of musical writing, just as the sound itself is concrete, a palpable, physical thing, lived as such.
After having lent the ears to the picking up of sound, like a zooming in, a second action becomes logically possible, using the same optical metaphor, a zooming out which culminates in a pan shot, wide enough to relate all the works to each other, creating a sort of contamination between them. Something like a hidden vibration appears between the works thanks to this superimposition, this mixing, this friction. So, for a moment, we hear what exists between one sound and another.
Julius says: “I’m concerned with the interval, the space between sounds. How far can this space expand?”. It is up to the visitor to find her/his own answer, wandering among the works. Julius’ target is to testify “humility before nature”, increasing the awareness of the listening experience. Nature which we are part of and where, he believes, any separation between visible and intelligible doesn’t exist: spiritual matter isn’t disjoined from perceptible matter. His work displays the invisible through sound and, just like Chinese landscape painting, through a fusion of full and empty.
So, the action of seeing and listening links us “to the real, that which has already begun, always” (E. Grazioli), to the flow we are living in, which we are part of. Neither more nor less.
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source: estaticit

Rolf Julius: Julius
“Mi piace la musica che circonda il presente”: così l’artista tedesco Rolf Julius esprime il senso del suo personale approccio alla Sound Art, di cui è uno dei maestri riconosciuti. Innumerevoli, a partire dal 1980, le sue installazioni sonore per musei e gallerie di Stati Uniti, Giappone, Europa, Canada.
Questa mostra – preceduta da una personale al FRAC-Bourgogne di Dijon a febbraio, dalla collettiva “Visual Sound” alla Mattress Factory di Pittsburgh a marzo e dalla mostra recentemente aperta alla Kunsthalle Fridericianum di Kassel – è un’occasione unica in Italia per entrare in diretto rapporto con un lavoro che risolve la sua complessità nella semplice naturale bellezza di un paesaggio acustico.

Julius ci invita a fare l’esperienza della visione del suono, ad ascoltare con gli occhi. Né più né meno. Da “Musik für die augen” (Musica per gli occhi) del 1981, al recentissimo “Large piano piece” (Grande pezzo per piano), il lavoro di Rolf Julius, pur esprimendosi con una grande varietà di accenti, si muove evidentemente nella stessa direzione. In molte sue opere, suoni provenienti da piccoli lettori CD fanno vibrare le membrane di altoparlanti, di varia misura, rivolti verso l’alto, che scuotono così, come fossero materia viva, i pigmenti in polvere che li ricoprono, provocando piccoli terremoti colorati. Le membrane degli altoparlanti traducono una delle componenti fisiche del suono, la vibrazione appunto, e così facendo lo rendono visibile nel suo agire.
Julius integra a questi altoparlanti anche altri materiali grezzi, come sassi o acqua, e diversi elementi, quali lastre di vetro o di metallo, vasi in terracotta, ciotole, tazze giapponesi o ‘wok’, che fanno da diffusori sonori, risonando. E’ attraverso questi elementi, supporto alla musica diffusa dagli altoparlanti, che il suono pensato diviene concreto. Essi agiscono così come rivelatori del suono, trappole per il suono stesso e per l’occhio. Infatti, attirando l’occhio dello spettatore, è come se gli permettessero di udire, grazie a quest’organo, ciò che altrimenti rischierebbe di essere percepito come un disturbo, un rumore di fondo, e non solo a causa del basso volume, ma anche per una certa pretesa supremazia percettiva dell’occhio. Avvicinandosi alle opere, l’ascoltatore-spettatore può distinguere e intendere la musica diffusa dagli altoparlanti, farne esperienza. Per Julius, questa esperienza dell’ascolto ha una concretezza che si oppone all’astrattezza della scrittura musicale, così come concreto è il suono, cosa fisica, palpabile, e come tale vissuta.
Dopo l’esperienza del tendere l’orecchio per captare, sorta di ‘zoom’ in avanti, una seconda azione diviene logicamente possibile, vale a dire, proseguendo con la stessa metafora ottica, uno ‘zoom’ indietro culminante con una panoramica, la più larga possibile, comunque tale da mettere in relazione le opere tra loro, creando una sorta di contaminazione tra l’una e l’altra. È in questa sovrapposizione, in questo missaggio, in questo sfregamento delle opere tra di loro che appare come una vibrazione recondita e, per un attimo, udiamo ciò che sta fra un suono e l’altro.
Dice Julius: “Mi interessa l’intervallo, lo spazio tra i suoni. Fino a dove si può espandere questo spazio?”. Spetta al visitatore, deambulando fra le opere, trovare la propria risposta. Obiettivo di Julius è, aumentando la coscienza dell’esperienza dell’ascolto, testimoniare “umiltà davanti alla natura”, natura di cui siamo parte, e nella quale, secondo lui, non esiste separazione tra visibile e intelligibile: lo spirituale non è disgiunto dal sensibile. La sua opera, lavorando col suono, rende manifesto l’invisibile attraverso la fusione di pieno e vuoto, come nella pittura di paesaggio cinese.
L’azione del guardare e dell’udire, in questo senso, ci lega “al già da sempre iniziato che è il reale” (Elio Grazioli), al flusso nel quale viviamo, del quale siamo parte. Né più né meno.