Tarek Atoui Improvisation in 10 Days
Exhibition view, Tarek Atoui “Improvisation in 10 Days” Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Rasa Juskeviciute
Tarek Atoui Improvisation in 10 Days Curated by Lucia Aspesi, opened on Wednesday, February 5, 2025 there was a Press preview on Tuesday, February 4, 2025 the exhibition will run until July 20, 2025
From February 6 to July 20, 2025, Pirelli HangarBicocca will present "Improvisation in 10 Days", the first solo exhibition in Italy by artist and electro-acoustic composer Tarek Atoui. Focusing on sound, his research expands on the acoustic medium provoking physical and mental responses in the public, stimulating activities of perception, experience and knowledge. Through installations, complex acoustic environments, and collaborative performances, Tarek Atoui experiments around the concept of listening, and pursues an artistic research that originates from different geographical, historical, and social contexts.
Tarek Atoui Waters' Witness (detail), 2020-23 Exhibition view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Courtesy the artist Photo: Agota Lukyte © Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024
Known for his distinctive approach to music, Tarek Atoui (Beirut, Lebanon, 1980; lives and works in Paris) investigates the acoustic properties of elements such as water, air, stone, and bronze and the ways in which they absorb sound and return it with unexpected nuances. This process initiates forms of aggregation and curiosity in the visitors, who are asked to play an active, participatory role.
The sonic environments created by the ensemble of the works present in the space suggest possible\ listening experiences and stimulate non-traditional learning processes.
Tarek Atoui The Rain, Rotating String Drum, 2023 (detail) Mixed media installation Installation view, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2023 Courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space © Ahina
After an education in music, Atoui began by exploring the properties of sound through performance, and later expanded his research into the spatiality of objects in relation to the artistic context. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with composers and artisans from various countries to invent and produce instruments with a strong sculptural imprint, combining a wide range of materials and skills. Using electronic devices and software, the artist reflects on contemporary social and political realities, revealing the importance of music and new technologies as dimensions of expression and identity. Educational values and social relations are constitutive aspects of Atoui's practice, which often involves collaborations with various local communities and invites visitors to interact and experience his multi-sensory environments.
"Improvisation in 10 Days", curated by Lucia Aspesi, is the title of Tarek Atoui's exhibition. "In Milan, my proposal is an homage to improvisation", explains the artist. Borrowing a specific term from the lexicon of music, Atoui explores the potential of composition in space, bringing the material, sculptural, architectural and relational qualities of the works into dialogue with the immaterial nature of sound and its reverberation in bodies and things. Using the Shed as a large blank canvas, the artist rearranges and recomposes works from one of his previous exhibitions, starting from the identity of the space (a place of production) and the time coordinates (the days on which the artist will set up the exhibition) and using them to "improvise" movements, harmonies, and tunings to create a collective experience in a sonic environment. This is the first time that Atoui has conceived an exhibition as an actual device capable of evolving and materializing over time in a given situation, creating a dynamic relationship between space, instruments, and people. The true potential of the project lies in its "dynamic" status, in its openness to chance.
Tarek Atoui Souffle Continu, 2024 Exhibition view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Photo: Markus Tretter Courtesy the artist © Tarek Atoui, Kunsthaus Bregenz
As the artist explains, "There is no loop, there is no beginning and end in the sense of a musical composition or structure that starts and ends. There's a cycle that is always transforming, and a relationship between instruments that is always changing"
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Tarek Atoui's works are conceived as constantly evolving projects that change over time and adapt to the different contexts in which they are presented. The artist is often inspired by past works that are reimagined, resulting in a different poetic experience and sensibility with each reworking. His research always begins with an acoustic paradigm that is experimented with through activities such as workshops with local communities of artisans, researchers, or musicians, and then leads to the production of sculptures and installations that invite a meditative and multi-sensory approach. In his work, sound takes on material qualities and, in addition to being heard, it can be transmitted and perceived through vibration, mechanical stress on a surface, or tactile experience. The exhibition presents three bodies of work, harmoniously displayed in space and in dialogue with natural light.
The first group of works, WITHIN (2013-ongoing), is one of the artist's longest running projects, stemming from a workshop Atoui designed and led with a community of deaf people. In these works, the artist searches for a method to perceive sound in a sensorial, visual, and performative dimension. Drawing on his background as an educator, he reflects on the act of listening and reinterprets musical sound as a language of learning. From this series of works, the exhibition includes the Souffle Continu group, consisting of Organ Within (2022), a sculpture that reinvents the traditional organ and its performative, spatial, and perceptual characteristics, and the more recent Wind House #1 and #2 (2023-24), two "wind rooms" accessible to visitors, who can experience through their bodies the sound produced by a flow of air compressed and shaped by the transparent structure. The second corpus, Waters' Witness (2020-23), stems from research conducted in collaboration with musician and composer Eric La Casa in various ports, including Athens, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Istanbul, Porto, Sydney, and Singapore. Experimenting with different technologies such as underwater and environmental microphones, Atoui recorded the sounds of these non-places that were once the beating heart of cities. For the version at Pirelli HangarBicocca, the artist displays several marbles from the city of Athens, now used in the restoration of ancient Greek temples.
The Rain (2023-24), one of the artist's lesser-known bodies of work, is dedicated to rain. Characterized by sophisticated forms and materials such as wood, rope, and bronze, the work is inspired by traditional Korean drum-making techniques and the craft of ceramics and paper. Atoui explores multiple sound compositions through the use of technological devices associated with the four elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—in a process that transforms the cycle of energy into new instruments and stimulates different listening experiences. As the artist reveals, "The four elements here play a fundamental role, they are the performers, and they are, I would say, at the forefront of bringing this piece to life and making it come together".
Tarek Atoui Portrait Photo: Miro Kuzmanovic © Tarek Atoui, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024
The artist
Tarek Atoui has exhibited his work at many leading institutions, including Museo Nacional Thyssen- Bornemisza and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Madrid (the exhibition will open on February 18, 2025); Kunsthaus, Bregenz, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2024); Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Museum of Contemporary Art MCA, Sydney, Institut d'art contemporain - Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (2023); The Contemporary Austin, Texas, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, Museo Serralves, Porto, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2022); Fridericianum, Kassel (2020); NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2017); Bergen Assembly (2016); Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive (2015); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2014). In addition, Atoui has presented his performances at Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana - Fondazione Pinault, Venice (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2017); Tate Modern, London (2016); Serpentine Gallery, London (2012); Performa 11, New York (2011).
His major group exhibitions include: Taipei Biennial (2023); Istanbul Biennial (2022); Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris, Gwangju Biennial (2021); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Venice Biennale, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); Fondazione Prada, Ca' Corner della Regina, Venice (2014); documenta, Kassel (2012); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Mediacity Biennial, Seoul, Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2010); Sharjah Biennial (2009).
Catalog
The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Marsilio Editori. Through a poetic visual narrative, the volume will present the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca and the artist's previous solo exhibitions at three international institutions: Kunsthaus Bregenz, S.M.A.K Gent (2024), and Institut d'art contemporain—Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (2023). The book, designed by Goda Budvytyte, is the result of a collaboration between these four European institutions and will include a critical essay by curator Ute Meta Bauer that examines Atoui's practice. In addition to the catalog, it will be realized a vinyl set featuring recordings of Atoui's instruments activated by a number of international musicians, including Jad Atuoi, Nicolas Becker, Laure Boer, Gobu Drab, Susanna Gartmayer, Charbel Haber, Mazen Kerbaj, Eric La Casa, Boris Shershenkov, DJ Snif, and Ziúr.
Pirelli HangarBicocca
Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary art. It was conceived and is supported by Pirelli. Established in 2004, Pirelli HangarBicocca has become a benchmark institution for the international art community, local public and region. It is a museum that is free of charge, accessible and open, and a place for experimentation, research and dissemination, where art is a point of reflection on the most topical themes of contemporary culture and society.
It caters to a broad and diverse public with a programme of major solo exhibitions by both Italian and international artists, a multi-disciplinary program of accompanying events and in-depth discussions, theoretical and informational publications, and educational courses. A team of museum facilitators is on hand at all times to help the public connect with the art. Vicente Todolí has been the foundation’s artistic director since 2012.
Situated in a former industrial building, once a locomotive manufacturing facility, Pirelli HangarBicocca occupies 15,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single-level exhibition spaces in Europe. This vast area comprises the Shed and Navate spaces, which are used for temporary exhibitions, and the permanent display of Anselm Kiefer’s The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015. This monumental installation with seven reinforced concrete towers has become one of the most iconic works in Milan. While since 2010 La Sequenza (1971-1981), a work by sculptor Fausto Melotti, has been located in the outdoor garden at the entrance of Pirelli HangarBicocca.
The building also houses a number of services for the public: a spacious entrance with reception area, facilities for educational activities, space for conferences and meetings, bookshop and bistro with a charming outdoor area.
For more information about this exhibition and others at Pirelli HangarBicocca please visit their site here. Pirelli can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Pinterest.
