Christian Marclay | White Cube (Bermondsey), London
28 January – 12 April 2015

White Cube’s major solo exhibition of works by Christian Marclay is a comprehensive exploration of the relationship between text, sound, image and performance. The exhibition presents video installations alongside works on paper and canvas, complemented by a series of Fluxus-inspired Happenings. With references to Pop Art, Action Painting and the history of Performance Art the exhibition is a celebration of Post-War artistic achievements, which are re-imagined for contemporary audiences.

Upon entering the gallery, one is immediately drawn into the darkness of ‘Surround Sounds’ (2014), a silent cacophony of onomatopoeic comic strip cuttings. The installation comprises of four large synchronised screens projecting a series of animated words collated from Superhero narratives. The sound does not come from an audio track, rather from this lexicon of Klangs, Ktangs, and Kliks that blur across the screens, transporting the viewer into a loud world of action. Whoooosh, Zoooom, Whrrrr, the playful use of language is exciting. Each word is brought to life, not only by its onomatopoeic quality, but also through Marclay’s adoption of basic design and animation principals: composition, size, shape, colour, speed, and direction. A small tic, creeps around the bottom of the screens, tic.. tic.. tic.. building tension and increasing in pace; tic, tic, tic, tic.. until BANG! A heavy THOOM suddenly thuds from the ceiling to the floor. The screen is soon attacked with Beep! Beep! Beeps flashing manically. Collaged cuttings are choreographed to create a dizzying frenzy in this sonic adventure.

The exhibition of Marclay’s paintings proved a fitting accompaniment to ‘Surround Sounds’ with their continued use of Pop imagery. They also provided an interesting segueway into the examination of Action and Performance. The works on paper and canvas bring together the two very distinct movements of Pop Art and Action Painting, both of which appeared during the 1950s in America yet remained very separate. The friction between the democracy of Pop Art and the elite nature of Abstract Expressionism, in this case, Action Painting, is negotiated by the artist’s union of the two forms.

Snippets of Pop text are printed over performative splatters of paint. Plop, Glop, Splish, Slup. These “wet” words, once again demonstrate the artists’ fascination with sound mimesis whilst also alluding to the liquid quality of the paint that is poured, dripped and splattered across the surface of the works. Here Marclay uses the text of Pop Art to evoke the gesture of Action Painting. Action plus

the sound of the action are ironically brought together to produce a silent, static, object. Does Marclay’s merging of the two conflicting movements render the popular, elite – or is the elite rendered popular? The traditional hierarchy is negated.

In 1958 art critic Harold Rosenberg defined Action Painting by its capacity to transform the canvas into “an arena in which to act.” He explained, “what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.” As a result, Action Painting is seen by many as the forbearer to the Fluxus movement, Happenings and the birth of Performance Art. Marclay’s video and performance works such as ‘Pub Crawl’ (2014) thus mark another logical development in his exploration of the everyday and the performative.

‘Pub Crawl’ is a participatory performance. The installation features a series of eleven video projections that trace the artist’s journey through the desolate streets of East London, early in the morning after. The tapping of empty bottles and cans produces an echoing soundtrack. This could be interpreted as a comment on contemporary drinking culture, or simply, a reinvigoration of everyday waste. With the presence of sound, the text of the former works is rendered redundant, and so abandoned. The videos are projected down either side of the main corridor walls. As the shadow of the viewer’s legs is cast onto the walls, one has no choice but to join the crawl. The passive viewer is unwittingly made the active subject.

The exhibition culminates in the North Gallery where a series of live Fluxus happenings have been scheduled for the duration of the exhibition, bringing together the investigation of text, sound, image and performance. The result is a unique sound recording on vinyl, presented in a limited edition cover printed with a sound-mimesis-meets-action image. Available to purchase for just £25, these Happenings render the rarified art object accessible to a wider public. Whoop, Wahh, Woo!