Hear Sound Art Across Texas this Spring

This spring, art enthusiasts across Texas will have various opportunities to encounter spaces displaying sound-based art. From exhibitions featuring foundational sound artists from the 1960s and 70s to more contemporary pairings and new works by emerging artists, there will be much to see and hear. Here is a quick overview of things to come:

Laurie Anderson, “Handphone Table-Remembering Sound,” 1979, wood, electronics, and audio transducers, 33 x 37 1/2 x 23 1/4 inches, The Rachofsky Collection. Image: The Warehouse

Sound as Sculpture
The Warehouse (Dallas)
January 21 – May 28, 2022

Curated by Thomas Feulmer, Sound as Sculpture presents sculptural works, performance pieces, videos, and site-specific installations. The exhibition will showcase familiar works from the Rachofsky Collection, such as Laurie Anderson’s Handphone Table-Remembering Sound in which the visitor’s body becomes a conduit for sound, alongside contemporary works, including a site-specific piece by Nora Schultz that uses contact microphones to capture and transform vibrations from the Warehouse’s building into sounds. The exhibition also includes works by John Cage, Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, Minoru Yoshida, Alvin Lucier, Mark Bradford, Haegue Yang, and others. 

Please note that The Warehouse is also launching expanded weekly public hours. The institution will be open every Friday and Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm, and admission is free.

A still image from a video work by Roberto Carlos Lange and Kristi Sword. Image: Ballroom Marfa

Kite Symphony: Roberto Carlos Lange & Kristi Sword
Ballroom Marfa
January 22 – May 7, 2022

This multidisciplinary exhibition — featuring film, an outdoor composition and installation, a drawing series, sculpture, animation, and performance — has sound at its core. Roberto Carlos Lange and Kristi Sword present a variety of works, created during a six-month residency, which explore the West Texas landscape. The Ballroom’s courtyard will be the site of a listening space where the artists will present sounds they collected from the surrounding community. Those who cannot travel to Marfa for the exhibition can hear the artists’ Kite Symphony, Four Variations on Bandcamp.  

Steve Parker, “Death Rattle,” 2021, cardboard, speakers, wires, paper, audio. Image: Sala Diaz

Steve Parker: SOUND TREATMENT
Sala Diaz (San Antonio)
January 22 – March 5, 2022

Sala Diaz is opening a solo exhibition by Steve Parker, an Austin-based artist and musician. In SOUND TREATMENT, Mr. Parker creates hybrid objects such as cardboard body parts embedded with speakers, and plywood boxes merged with parts of brass horns. Mr. Parker’s work draws on a variety of influences: religious chants, the noise intoners of the Italian Futurists, autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) clips shared over social media, and American composer Pauline Oliveros. 

Soundwaves- Experiments in Art + Music at the Moody Center for the arts at Rice University in Houston January 28 2022

Soundwaves: Experiments in Art + Music
The Moody Center for the Arts (Houston)
January 28 – May 14, 2022

Soundwaves: Experiments in Art + Music features work from a variety of disciplines, including sculpture, painting, performance, video, and audio. Though connected by the inclusion of both audio and visual components, the art explores a range of themes such as perceptions, memory, time, technology, and social justice. The exhibition features work by Nevin Aladağ, Nick Cave, Raven Chacon, Charles Gaines, Jennie C. Jones, Idris Khan, Christine Sun Kim, Jason Moran, Sarah Morris, Trevor Paglen, Anri Sala, and Naama Tsabar and new works by Jamal Cyrus, Spencer Finch, and Jorinde Voigt.

Sightings- Olivia Block at Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas January 29 2022

Sightings: Olivia Block
The Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas)
January 29 – April 24, 2022

Alongside the show Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life, and as part of the Nasher’s ongoing Sightings series, the museum has commissioned Olivia Block to create a sound installation. Her work, The Speed of Sound in Infinite Copper, is comprised of recordings she made of Bertoia’s sounding sculptures featured in the exhibition. Visitors will be able to engage with the work, activating it by their movements throughout the gallery space. In 2015 in Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion, Ms. Block — a media artist and composer — created and performed Sonambient Pavilion, which also used Bertoia’s sounding sculptures.