gr10k_18hz destroying my tahoe

Title: 18hz destroying my tahoe
Artists: Tom Wheatley, Puce Mary, Alessandro Di Pietro
Date: Friday June 23rd, 2023
Address: Rue Chapon 30, 75003 Paris
Time: 17:00
Duration: 120 minutes
Catalogue Number: GR005
44.1 kHz sample rate
Limited capacity

“18hz destroying my tahoe” takes its title from a YouTube video in which a car with a subwoofer modification blasts music in a nondescript grassland, unleashing a shook, decibel-driven destruction of the machine’s confining shell.

This broken attempt to synchronize sound and physical spaces inspire the installation, which consists of an hour-long sound piece played twice as a transplant for GR10K’s nearby collection. During the show, an exposed piece of string music, written by Tom, becomes hacked by Puce to create a complex rumble and dissonant stress/release in one room. This gradual assault on the music’s formal qualities are an interesting pressure point for GR10K to explore as it confronts its own terminal illness of being a creative organ trying to break out of a visceral legal conundrum. While the artist’s hack may seem small, it ultimately changes everything. The double bass is held by a muscular rock stop created by Alessandro to support the instrument and its bow strokes (personified in the collection with a defiled silver pin accessory), which although may seem corrupt, for all intents and purposes is the object’s only support system. This simple input/output exercise is a way for GR10K to practice transforming outsider cultural habits into artistic expressions that can work within the context of a routine trade event.

The event is co-presented by Flash Art, and supported by zaza’ Gallery, Pan Records, and many other individuals (like Michael Speers) to whom we are eternally grateful.

Tom Wheatley is an artist and musician based in London. His work is patterns, rhythms and cycles, at an interface of physical and digital zones. His main collaborations are теплота with Grundik Kasyansky, Vesta Payne with Sarah Hartnett, Cast-On with Ilana Blumberg, and various lineups & outputs with Daniel Blumberg, often including Billy Steiger, Ute Kanngiesser and Jim White.

Puce Mary is the solo moniker of Danish-born experimental musician, composer and sound artist Frederikke Hoffmeier. With a long career in experimental electronic music – Puce Mary has a reputation for intense live performances that span from gripping renditions of cinematic composition to the full-on fury of off-the-cuff harsh noise. Oft-identified with the now-generation of industrial noise, the project’s recent endeavours explores the field of sound more broadly than before, unfurling a complex sonic and literary narrative of tension and release, amidst disquieting dynamics and surreal cinematics. With countless releases (most recently on PAN), performances and collaborations with artists such as Drew McDowall (ex-Coil), Varg2TM (Northern Electronics), Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley, Puce Mary has reached wide acclaim for her powerful and unique blend of modern experimental electronic and noise music.

Alessandro Di Pietro is an artist whose work is based on linguistic structures and cinematographic grammars, outlining methodologies that generate new narratives and production strategies through hybrid environments, inhabitants of monstrous plausible characters and non-objective technologies. In 2017, he participated as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Notable exhibitions include “The Project Manager Syndrome” at Zaza, Milan (IT), 2023, and “Occult Desserts” at All Stars, Lausanne (CH), 2022. He has just completed a residency at the Watermill Center (NY) and will open a solo show there this summer.

Since 1967, Flash Art has been synonymous with a cutting edge perspective on contemporary art and the global art landscape. Renowned for its iconic covers, currently active with International and Italian editions, the magazine remains – after more than five decades – committed to analysing and reporting established but also experimental art practices and happenings in the art world, publishing essays by the most authoritative critics and observers together with artists statements and special projects exclusively conceived for the magazine.