Galerie Kuchling is pleased to announce the first in Germany held solo show by Slovenian artist Miha Erman. The performance and intermedia artist will present his latest artwork, consisting of photography and video.

Room with no Echo is a project in stages. It started in 2010, entering an anechoic chamber which was a starting base for the first stage – a performance premiered in 2010 in Ljubljana and got its upgraded form at Italian Fabrica Europa Festoval in 2011. A year after Miha Erman presented a gallery instalment of the project in Slovenian gallery Miklova Hiša where he used some of the material from the performance, but still remained concerned with the base-idea of the project.

Proofed against sound, the anechoic chamber is a space where walls absorb all sound frequencies inside it. Thus it is devoid of any echoes, such as form in regular spaces, as well as any sounds from the outside. Placed into such a space, the body is left alone with itself. And upon turning off the lights, even the outside space disappears.

As John Cage entered one of such spaces more than half a century ago, he expected to encounter absolute silence. Instead, he heard two frequencies produced by his own body. He learned that sound will always be present in his life, even if only as the reverberation of bodily functions. To clear up – what he perceived inside the chamber instead of silence, was irrational emerging of fear, panic and acute insecurity, mostly as a result of audible bodily functions of breathing, heartbeat and even blood circulation and digestion. With the lack of any echoes, the space of sound is the body itself, experienced in its singularity. There is no other or place as we know it and therefore all that is left is a direct confrontation with oneself.

Exhibition Room with no Echo is not trying to re-create the situation of the chamber described, but uses it as starting points for the emergence of new situation, established through different media usage. One of the key moments when preparing the exhibition were the relations between the author’s experiences in the anechoic chamber, the performance and the exhibition. The first two events are dynamic, unconditionally tied to the presence of the artist’s body and limited to a short period of time, but the gallery space seemingly flattens the presentation of the idea. Erman’s intention is placed right there: how to place the lacking body that once was there, so it could rise in visitor’s imagination.

The photographs and videos were created with explicit intent of creating a new artwork, conceptually based on the anechoic chamber experience, but formally linked to the performance. Both the performance and the depiction are in equal measure tied to the original experience and completely independent wholes. What is offered to the viewer, is a body of work from which a new experience and a new body can arise.

Exhibition from 14th JULI-11th AUGUST 2012

ARTIST