Infinite looping in harmony

Participating artists: Ray Barsante (in collaboration with Galerie Lefebvre & Fils), Arnaud Eubelen, Veronika Hilger, Victoire Inchauspé, Théo Massoulier, Leo Maher, Leo Orta, Janine van Oene, Vika Prokopaviciute, Romain Sarrot, Thomas van Rijs, Anna Virnich

Special Project : Counterpoint and collision for 7 tapes loops by Richard Sears

March 28 - April 11, 2023

Press Release (pdf)

Twelve artists, a soaring soundtrack, an irregular and colorful aesthetic are all key ingredients for the new group show, ‘Infinite Looping in Harmony’, elaborated by HATCH.

The exhibition opens the 2023 season with a plunge into the jazzy cosmogony of Richard Sears, a pianist inhabited by the works proposed in the space, by the budding idyll between rhythms and forms. This musician and composer, originally from San Francisco, imagines an original soundtrack that integrates the sounds of the artists at work: sounds of the studio or of inspiration are mixed with his score, which plays continuously in the exhibition space.

‘Infinite Looping in Harmony’ is an invitation to a psychedelic journey: the repetition of Sear's patterns gets into the visitor's head, sending the constellation of works presented into orbit. The resulting choreography submerges us in a polyphonic, synesthetic and sensual experience. Here, the music is conceived in a random, self- generating manner, subject to the pure chance that only those who have once experienced space, may have encountered.

Sears is the conductor of the exhibition, and his score sets the tempo for everything else, with no precise plan, no roadmap, other than the one the viewer wants to give him. The eyes cling to the multiple supports offered by the artists, paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, while the ear attaches itself to the notes for the beginning of this ballet, of this infinite spatial experience.

The rhythms are those of the musical avant-garde of the 70s, which very early on found in loops and repetitions the possibility of an island, a freedom, an invention, an art. It is to these that 'Infinite Looping in Harmony' refers and pays homage via its musical mantras that dance in the void of a world in decline.

The deconstruction operated by the erratic and dodecaphonic music of Richard Sears is the exact counterpart of the works of Théo Massoulier or Romain Sarrot, making the impregnation by the visitor even more profound, to the point of excess, to the point of discomfort. The emotional impact is multiplied tenfold here, and the infinite number of collusions evoked leaves the distant flicker of the pianist's notes lingering in the space.

It is the end of the technical and post-industrial world that finds its echo in this deconstructed music, and allows the emergence here of the purpose of Leo Orta's sculptures, of his forms neither human nor animal, neither living nor dead, this quasi blob that fascinates us so strangely. The alchemy between these forms of life, the obsession of the organic is also found in the paintings of Janine van Oene, Vika Prokopaviciute or Ray Barsante’s sculptures. What forms, what research, what political consciousness will carry the creations of tomorrow, in order to continue to upset us, to alert us, to surprise us?

Veronika Hilger and Anna Virnich explore the adversity of opposites, the vital impulse against the ineluctable power of time passing, while Arnaud Eubelen rewrites the world and design according to his own codes. Eventually, Thomas van Rijs, Victoire Inchauspé and Leo Maher carry out a necessary work of memory, harmoniously combining the materials of the past with those of the present. A generation is here, gathered, embodying each ramification of the world of tomorrow.

With this ambitious project, HATCH confirms its place in the avant-garde of contemporary art, and tries to make perceptible the infinite creation that hides behind a usually soundless language.

Courtesy of Margaux Beytout