On the Bottom of the Sky

“On the bottom of the sky, there stands a man flapping his arms.”
Russell Edson (in an interview with Mark Tursi)

Galerie Mazzoli is proud to present On the Bottom of the Sky, the fourth solo exhibition by Douglas Henderson its Berlin location.
Henderson is a master sound artist. Few artists can boast comparable knowledge of and loyalty to sonic phenomena as the Baltimore native. In his work, sound has always been the driving force, the creative element from which the artistic process unfolds. Fascinated at the beginning of his career by the relation between sound and the environment, he proceeded to venture more and more into the visual realm by associating visible artifacts—normally sculptural in nature and often including loudspeakers—to his sonic concoctions. Seeking to perfect the connection between the auditory and the visual, he began in recent years to use sound to give life to static matter, setting his pieces in motion in the most unexpected ways without the aid of motors of any kind. By doing so, he has been able to establish an unbreakable tie between an object and its sonic counterpart, instantly banishing a semiotic bug that has haunted many sound works of the last decades: the problem of the cognitive hindrance that separates visual stimuli from the auditory, when the latter are not connected to the former in an evident source-outcome relation. In Douglas Henderson's works, sound and the object find sense in each other.
On the Bottom of the Sky follows this trail, showing us a further evolution of his research. Upon entering the exhibition, we see no visible loudspeakers, and yet immediately become aware of the formidable presence of sound and silence disguised as motion and stillness. As we proceed to open our ears, we realize that the assertive soundtracks that have characterized Henderson’s older works have been replaced with a focus on subsonic elements, namely the ones that have a direct impact on the objects' motion. Indeed, he addresses the potential of sonic artefacts on the edge of perception.
The work Shimmer, for example, consists of nine pieces of light blue silk cloth suspended from carbon bars which are assembled in a square grid. They hang from the wall, and through the gaps between them it is possible to glimpse the supporting structure. When active, the cloth’s homogenous surface melts into dynamic wave structures, shapes and gestures. On the silk, this results in a vivid graphic game that is reminiscent of the surface of water. These ephemeral patterns are propelled by low-frequency sinusoidal tones, which are produced by loudspeakers placed behind the pieces of cloth. The outcome is an exciting play between geometric stability and transience that is perceived by the eye and ear alike.
At first glance, some of the fleeting graphic patterns appearing on the silk surface of Shimmer seem to have been frozen in the main structure of Sounder II. A collaboration with the artist‘s brother, sculptor David Henderson, this piece consists of a two-meter high panel made of black carbon fiber displaying the dynamic circular movements in a plastic realization. The pulsating circles of the water’s surface now appear solidified and static. Itself transformed into a large speaker, the work Sounder II translates soundwaves into mechanical vibrations. The membrane projects audible and inaudible frequencies of the sound composition, making the object resonate (sometimes visibly) and restituting a soundtrack that is different from the actual composition driving it, which is in turn based on the frequencies that were used to produce the visual image. In other words, we have specific sounds in front of our eyes—molded in the sculpture— which were also used to produce a sound composition to move the image, but we don’t hear most of those sounds, rather the sculptures’ own interpretation of them.
In another instance (enter.), Henderson confronts a completely static and quiet matter, and sound and movement are present only in the mind of the viewer, in a form of reminiscence of what the object may have overheard in the process of becoming what we see before us. The described pieces represent the main installations in the exhibition. One should not be fooled, however, into thinking that the auditory aspect of these works is being overlooked. Quite the contrary, sound is without doubt the life of the party, only in a more subtle way than in Henderson’s previous shows at Galerie Mazzoli.
In On the Bottom of the Sky, Henderson looks back at his origins, and references pieces that are some 15 years old (e.g., stop, Untitled 2004). In this exhibition he is more concerned with the conceptual and structural dimensions of sound rather than with its social and political implications. While not completely doing away with his wit and political satire, as the title suggests, this time Henderson invites us to reflect upon issues of recontextualization, and perhaps of disorientation—as a form of positive loss of a clear perspective—through sound. Indeed, he goes one level further in distancing himself from traditional music composition, and while actuating de facto some similar strategies in the preparation of the soundtracks, he is not requiring us to listen to a particular fictional narrative. Rather, he wants us to concentrate on the nature of sound itself, on its relation with its surrounding matter—its visual manifestation—and on its ability to transform in front of our eyes and fiddle with our perception.
Ultimately, On the Bottom of the Sky reminds us that sound depends on an object in order to exist, but once it is tied to that object our understanding of it will undergo relentless, infinite shifts.