Today we go #IntheArchive with Laurent Grasso’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery, SoundFossil, which was on view September 11 – October 23, 2010. Join us today, June 25, on IG Live for Tea Time with Sean and Laurent Grasso at 3:30pm EST
The intersection of theoretical hypotheses and fact-based science was the thematic focus of this exhibition, in which #LaurentGrasso referenced the seemingly impossible contemporary mythology of “sound fossils”--random recordings of sound vibrations located in objects such as pottery or stone. In 1964, astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a radio frequency remnant, supposedly created by the Big Bang, while using a microwave receiver known as the Horn Antenna. This exhibition included Grasso’s model of the Horn Antenna, which made a connection between sound fossil mythology and the scientific discovery by the two scientists, and for which he won the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2008.
Also included in the exhibition was one of @laurentgrasso’s Anechoic Walls, works which resemble the device used in modern technology to trap sound reverberations. Crafted from copper, a material associated with its superb conductive capabilities, Grasso’s anechoic wall references not just the absorption and/or reflection of sound, but light as well. This interest in light was further explored in neon works included in the exhibition, such as the dual-colored Eclipse.
Describing his work, critic and art historian Arnauld Pierre, has written that, “Grasso’s works reflect a recovered ability to travel along temporal lines whose interchanges and intricacies are all stages of a voyage that he defines as a ‘projection of the past toward the future.’”