Xaviera Simmons, Warm Leatherette, 2002. Deutsche Bank Collection
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Jennie C. Jones, Record & Listen in Yellow and Brown, 2004. Deutsche Bank Collection
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Jennie C. Jones, Record & Listen in Yellow and Brown, 2004. Deutsche Bank Collection
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David Ellis, OH, 2011. Deutsche Bank Collection
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Gerhard Richter, Schallplatte "Glenn Gould", 1984. Deutsche Bank Collection. © Gerhard Richter
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Gerhard Richter, Glenn Branca, 1983. Deutsche Bank Collection. © Gerhard Richter
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Christian Marclay, Graffiti Composition, 2002, Deutsche Bank Collection, Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. © Christian Marclay
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Christian Marclay, Graffiti Composition, 2002, Deutsche Bank Collection, Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. © Christian Marclay
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John Cage, Untitled, 1987. Deutsche Bank Collection
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Her artistic work is unimaginable without music. Inspired by jazz icons like Charlie Parker, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday, Jennie C. Jones’s
drawings and collages have the casual elegance of Bebop and Cool Jazz.
“When I am really "in the zone," explains the New York-based artist in
an interview with ArtMag,
“I almost feel that the gesture of making a line is the duration of a
note and it becomes a conceptual practice – the relationship between
listening and drawing.” The works of Xaviera Simmons are also influenced by Afro-American sounds. She once said that when she listens to Grace Jones’s version of Use Me,
she feels as if she is “running through a thunderstorm, crying.” Music
has always inspired the visual arts, often provoking the creation of
innovative and transgressive work. Music can be a central part of one’s
life, one’s biography, and its capacity for personal resonance applies
to Simmons, who worked as a DJ for years and has amassed a collection
of over 4,000 records. Warm Leatherette (2002) is the title of her homage to Grace Jones in the Deutsche Bank Collection. The photographic work, in which a young woman holds the eponymous 1980 record before her face, was on view in a show called The Sight of Sound in the Deutsche Bank Lounge at Frieze New York this May, among other works from the collection by artists who have investigated the theme of music in their work.
Now
the exhibition can be seen at the 60 Wall Gallery in Deutsche Bank’s
New York Head Office. The show covers several decades in music and art
history and includes drawings by John Cage, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, who is currently being rediscovered for his visual art; Gerhard Richter, who made abstract paintings on Glenn Gould records; and Christian Marclay, who was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale for his 24-hour film The Clock (2010). In 2002 Marclay turned the residents of Berlin into collaborators in a collective composition for his 150-part work Graffiti Composition.
For a music festival in the city, he had 5,000 blank sheets of musical
staff paper hung in public places—as an invitation to passersby to
write notes or scrawl graffiti on them. Particularly for the younger
artists in the exhibition, popular music throughout the ages bears an
enormous influence. Inspired by songs like The Message (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, David Ellis
wrote his own compositions as an adolescent; his works, which he calls
“Motion Paintings,” are marked by a joy in innovation and the rhythm of
Hip Hop culture.
The Sight of Sound
6/8 – 9/21/2012
60 Wall Gallery, New York
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