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Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac - Pantin - galerie d'art
69 avenue du Général Leclerc, 93500, Pantin
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Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting a solo exhibition by the artist Cory Arcangel, born in Buffalo (USA) in 1978. Arcangel has built up an international reputation since the early 2000s with his innovative performances, videos and computer-generated projects. Arcangel is now considered a pioneer of a generation of artists who have devoted themselves to the archaeology of (computer) technologies. The presentation of the already legendary installation Super Mario Clouds (2002-) in the opening exhibition of the new Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA), America Is Hard to See, underlines Arcangel's position.
The genealogy of iconic pop music hits, awareness of the historic character of (electronic) musical instruments, the archiving of music and the mutual permeation of the "pop" and "classical" spheres have become central to Arcangel's work in recent years. Take for instance Arcangel's concert series Dances for the Electric Piano, performed from 2013 to 2015 at venues including ICA London (UK), Berlin Philharmonie (Germany), MUMOK, Vienna (Austria) and the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich (Germany). In these compositions Arcangel plays with our collective unconscious knowledge about the sound of the synthesizer Korg M1, popular in 1990s house and techno music, which has become less and less significant for electronic music since the 2000s.
One of the three works in the exhibition, the sculpture PSK (2014), has a similar function: it consists of the drum machine Roland TR-909 programmed with a rhythm which became popular with the song P.S.K. What Does it Mean? (1985) by Philadelphia rapper Schooly D. It is one of the most sampled beats in music history between 1985 and the 1990s. P.S.K. What Does it Mean? is considered one of the most influential songs of early hardcore and gangster rap, with direct textual references to sex, drugs and weapon use – still unusual at that time. The drum machine plays this beat in an endless loop, filling the exhibition room with a monotonous sound. In a public discussion with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Munich in May 2015, Arcangel repeatedly remarked that for him this work was about the protest about forgetting. According to Arcangel, technology is a trend, and one possible function of his work is to save outdated technologies from being forgotten.
Du mardi au samedi, de 10h à 19h
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