January 22 - May 8, 2022
From Ballroom Marfa:
“Ballroom Marfa presents Kite Symphony, a multidisciplinary exhibition by Roberto Carlos Lange and Kristi Sword, opening January 22. The project features a newly commissioned film, outdoor composition and installation, a series of drawings, sculpture, animation, and a special Earth Day performance on April 22. Sound is the throughline between these diverse elements of this long-term project. Lange is a musician (widely known as Helado Negro) and Sword is a visual artist, and Kite Symphony is an extension of their collaborative practice where they create work at the intersection of music, performance, and visual art.
Invited by Ballroom in March 2020 for a production trip for Kite Symphony, then a short film with a live score, Lange and Sword found themselves in West Texas at the onset of a global pandemic and mandates to socially isolate. The artists elected to remain in Marfa and with Ballroom’s support, extended their trip into a six-month residency. Their experience was the catalyst for Ballroom Sessions—The Farther Place, a residency program developed to support cross-disciplinary artists and musicians. As their time in Marfa extended Kite Symphony expanded into a full-scale exhibition, including new installation works, a community sound piece, performance, and four new experimental compositions released through Ballroom’s Bandcamp. Pitchfork called this EP a “free-flowing collage that doubles as a snapshot of the project’s sprawl” and named it one of the top 20 ambient albums of 2020. The album features contributions from noted local musicians Jeanann Dara and Rob Mazurek, led by Sword’s meditative and meticulous visual scores.
The exhibition at Ballroom features an impressionistic film, which explores the imperceptible forces that shape the West Texas landscape. The video documents the artists’ observations and experiments with wind and light interacting with kites, hand-made mylar instruments, found objects, and native plant materials. Lange and Sword turn their gaze upwards in Star Scores, a piece of visual music that reflects on the region’s dark skies through hand-made animations of galaxies orbiting, multiplying, and expanding through an imaginary celestial space. Adjacent are Sword’s ink drawings of rhythmic and repetitive brush marks, revealing a continuous evolution of a landscape in constant motion. Ballroom’s courtyard will be transformed into a listening space where Lange presents a new sonic installation composed of the sounds collected from the community. Taken together, all of these newly commissioned works heighten the audience’s sense of space by attuning us to expansive new sonic geographies, helping us to listen in diverse ways, and reminding us of our presence in a living world.
On Earth Day, April 22, 2022, Ballroom will host a day of performances with Roberto Carlos Lange and several of his musical collaborators. The show will feature live renditions of Star Scores, a performance of Kite Symphony, Four Variations with a live ensemble, and performances by several friends of the artists, with the full lineup to be announced in early 2022.
Kite Symphony is organized by Sarah Melendez, Ballroom Marfa music curator.
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Generous support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Texas Commission on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Lebermann Foundation; Virginia Lebermann & Family; City of Marfa; Ballroom Marfa Board of Trustees; the Ballroom Marfa International Surf Club; and Ballroom Marfa members.
ARTIST BIOS
Roberto Carlos Lange, Helado Negro (b. 1980) is South Florida native, born to Ecuadorian immigrants and based in Brooklyn. Exploring Latinx identity, and pluralistic sensibilities, his music as Helado Negro is lyrically personal and politically avant-pop. His latest album Far In was released on October 22 on 4AD. The Warhol has commissioned a multi-media performance, Songs for Marisol, premiering February 2, 2022. In 2019 he was awarded both a United States Artists Fellow in Music and a Grants to Artists award in Music from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Helado Negro has presented work in diverse venues from clubs to cultural organizations including the Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA.; Margulies Warehouse, Miami, FL; Club 2 Club, Turin, Italy; Vive Latino, Mexico City; the Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; and the Museum of Modern Art, NY.
Kristi Sword, (b. 1980) is a visual artist working in small-scale kinetic sculpture and drawing. Entry into her sculptural work was through her formal jewelry training. She received her B.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design and her M.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz both in Metal and Jewelry. Kristi has shown her artwork at the 92nd St Y in Tribeca as well as the NARS Project Space in Brooklyn. She has made album cover artwork for Helado Negro and Warm Ghost and has completed artist residencies at the Oregon College of Art and Craft and at Marble House.”
On View: January 22, 2021 | 12–5 pm
108 E San Antonio Street
Marfa, 79843 TX
(432) 729-3600
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