Christian Marclay at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Following his arrival in novel York City in the late '70 Christian Marclay began slicing vinyl records and recombining the disparate parts into novel disks that he played during performances and displayed as art particulars This musical esthetic likewise informed his record-cover collages and his 1987 installation in the Clocktower Gallery, where viewers were invited to tread on records laid across the floor, their shoe leaving trails of dusty footprints that "recorded" their passages end time and space.

The visualization of whole remains one of Marclay's main bear upons Over the past few years, he has evolveed a new way of achieving it, through raiding museum storerooms in search of acoustic themes. All the works in "Pictures at an Exhibition," Marclay's selection of percepts from the collection of the Whitney Museum, call forth the production of sound, primarily instrumental and vocal music. Nevertheless, noise -- individual of the possible terrains of musical expression since the Futurists -- and its antithesis, silence -- introduced into the musical realm by dint of Cage, among others -- were alluded to through the inclusion of such works as Harold Edgerton's riveting photographs of a bullet exiting a fire-arm and Roy Lichtenstein's lithographic rendering of an explosion.

Marclay overlayed the gallery walls with beige wallpaper printed with compositions by means of Haydn and Mozart. Hanging upon the back wall were above 40 framed paintings, prints, photographs and drawings, including works by the agency of Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Reginald Marsh and Joseph Stella. The works were placed single against the other, in a tight, gridded pattern. Situated in forehead of the polyphonic interplay of framed images were three files of paired benches (borrowed from the uptown Whitney) whose cushions were upholster with fabrics depicting musical notes and instruments and Elvis jamming away. Richard Artschwager's wall-bound Formica organ was hung just to the right upon the adjoining wall. Delightfully wacky plastic arts by Robert Arneson (Whistling in the Dark) and Bernard Reder (Harp Player, II) stood upon either side of the gallery's entrance. The overall event was that of entering a chapel.

The installation literally came alive upon the night of Nov. 20 when Marclay, Toshio Kajiwara and DJ Olive, The Audio Janitor, used multiple turntables and LP to fill the installation with uninjured Although the result lacked tension and contrast, the audience stood transfixed around the trio.

"Pictures at an Exhibition" -- named after an 1874 composition by the agency of Modest Moussorgsky that was inspired through the architectural drawings, stage designs and watercolors of his friend Victor Hartmann -- was a miraculous show that pumped new life into fine and not with equal reason fine works, by better and smaller known artists.

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