Haroon Mirza at ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chăng, West Bund Art & Design

13 October 2016

Lisson Gallery returns to the Shanghai-based fair West Bund Art & Design with an immersive sound and light installation by British artist Haroon Mirza. A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatograpy Transcriptions in Surround Sound (2015) is one of several presentations in the fair’s new special exhibition programme 'ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chăng'. Curated by ArtReview Asia, the programme aims to present the most urgent and cutting-edge works in the field of art.

Haroon Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. His 2015 work A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatograpy Transcriptions in Surround Sound forms a circuit of eight blinking LED sound devices arranged between assemblages of acoustic foam wedges across the perimeter of a room. Mirza took his inspiration from Four Sonakinatography Compositions – an eight-part notation piece by Californian artist Channa Horwitz, which conveys potential sounds and movements in time through arrangements of shapes and colours. Transcribed and written into a computer program by Mirza’s studio, hrm199 Ltd., these notations control light and sound of the installation, causing the electric noise of the current to light the LEDs in various colours and to be simultaneously translated via speakers into audible noise. Together, the four interpretations result in an approximately one hour long electronic light and sound concert.

Alongside Mirza, 'ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chăng' features Asian and international artists, operating in a variety of media, including large-scale sculpture, installation, moving image and performance. The curatorial concept of the program originates in the Chinese characters for ‘xiàn’ and ‘chăng’, which together mean ‘the scene’ (of a crime, accident, etc); (on) the spot; (at) the site. Situated in public areas both inside and outside the fair, the artworks on show explore how context provides a contemporary artwork with added significance or validity – and how the ‘contemporary’ aspect of contemporary art is as much about space or place as it is about time. Artists showing at 'ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chăng' are invited to play with notions of context, in all four dimensions of space time, and its ability to bring about meaning, both intended and unexpected, in their work.

West Bund Art & Design will also offer a special prize for 'ArtReview Asia Xiàn Chăng', for which a committee of invited curators will select the best work within the program. The list of jurors as well as the final winner will be announced in November 2016.