A Gallery Ends in Silence

In a fit of sad irony, the Tribeca gallery Gigantic Art Space (GAS) will be closing its doors this weekend with the conclusion of its final exhibit, [silence]. Curated by Galen Joseph-Hunter and Dylan J. Gauthier, the show investigates the “futility of the chase, the beauty of absence, and the rich potential of an empty signal.” In practice, and off the pages of the press release, this means pieces like Douglas Henderson’s mesmerizing Untitled – a sound sculpture in which pools of water in the cones of four upturned loudspeakers ripple and purr as inaudibly low frequencies course through them. At 4:33pm tomorrow evening (Saturday, Feb. 24th) the radio theatre troupe 31 Down will perform, marking the end of the exhibit and GAS’ final hour.

[silence] has hosted a number of these Saturday performances, and last weekend’s was certainly worth the trek to Franklin Street. Australian artist Michael Graeve – who played alongside Tianna Kennedy (a free03point9 staff member and [silence] contributor) and her cello – used a fascinating musical contraption built by an Austrian friend of his. I didn’t catch its name (if it had one), but Grave’s “instrument” was essentially a 70s-era portable record player/speaker combo hooked up to a large glass mirror. By “hooked up,” I mean the mirror had a pick-up attached to its face that functioned much like what you’d find on a Les Paul. Every time Kennedy would tap on the back of the mirror or run her cello bow along its edge the record player’s speaker would react accordingly, amplifying the sound to the nth degree. After fiddling with the mirror, Kennedy returned to her chair to run through a series of haunting harmonics and single note passages over Greave’s record-player assisted feedback. You could feel the wine rumbling in your little plastic cup.

Brian Devine, who has worked in film and television production and as a singer-songwriter with the band Spanish Speaking Psychics, founded Gigantic Art Space in 2003. GAS was conceived as a kind of media catch-all – a meeting place for artists working with sound, video, and other interactive technologies. Though I know little of Devine’s and artistic director Lea Rekow’s past work at GAS, if [silence] is at all representative, the gallery will surely be missed come Sunday.