CLARA OPPEL

Statement


Clara Oppel’s works are situated at the interfaces between sound, space, installation, and sculpture. She combines sound into a symbiosis with image and space, so as to create spatial sculptures which can be walked around in. By means of audio recordings, she penetrates deep into the materiality of perception. “It’s like zooming in,” she says, “but with the microphone, in order to make a microorganism audible.” Particles of original sound are extracted and modified to the point of becoming unrecognizable. She works in particular with the construction of visual elements, as well as with the movements and transformations of acoustic signals in space. The artist is concerned with the interactions between acoustic and visual perception. Both these factors determine the space in equal measure, and the give-and-take between them creates a field of dynamic tension. Immaterial sound acquires a physical appearance and, together with the sculptural elements, gives rise to synaesthetic situations. This formative interplay engenders the spatial sculptures.

Each work evinces intermodal qualities, situations which are at the same time both image and sound. The acoustic and sculptural inner life of the objects and installations takes us on journeys in multimedial space, where all situations have a reciprocal impact on each other. It is only through the amalgamation of these auditory, visual, and spatial components of equal value that the interrelated whole achieves the goal sought by the artist—the sound sculpture.

Works

between two stools

Zwei Stühle laden die Besucher zum Sitzen ein. In einem der Stühle befinden sich Kontaktmikrofone, welche die Geräusche der sich hinsetzenden Person abnehmen.

fade in – fade out

When visitors enter the bright, seemingly empty, white room, the light goes off immediately. The objects on the wall appear, and at the same time the sound composition begins.
As the residual visual impression slowly fades, the spatial sound takes its perceptual place.

Knick

Sound events ranging from scratchy to scraping emerge from the corners. They amble around, solidify, and reconstruct themselves anew.

inhale-exhale

Hygiene masks are installed serially in the form of two fields (120 x 150 cm) on two walls facing each other. Minimalist breathing sounds whisper from one wall to the other.

transient

The bats spend their winter in this corridor, almost 100 m long. In summer though, they live outside. Obviously the textures of sounds they make there, in an environment with meadows, castle wall, the banks of a lake, are richly varied. Summer or winter though, their sound frequencies are inaudible to us.

texere

2020, sound installation.392 speakers, audio system, 8 channel composition, 3.8 x 11 mRischArt_Projekt, Gasteig, München The composition consists of speech sounds, speech frag-ments, breathing noises, and all kinds of sound creations. One hears sounds which move along the wall at intervals of time and overlap. The sound of the meandering tones is simultaneously reflected back…

beyond that II

2020, sound installation.4 loudspeaker, cables, audio system, 4 channel, compositionPARQUE DEL iSOLation, LAMES / IMA St. Pölten Four loudspeakers are so positioned in the garden that they are hardly visible. The sound installation uses the garden vegetation and its urban environment, and interprets the associated acoustic events. One hears electronically trans-formed sounds from nature and…

in moving space

2020, sound installation.1160 piezo transducers, spatial audio system, stranded wire, spatial audio system, 4 channel composition, 4.5 x 3.5 m< rotor > center for contemporary art, Graz For her audio installation, Clara Oppel divides a large number of sound transducers into eight sound fields, each of which can be controlled individually. The audio material collected…

natural sounds

2019, sound sculpture.4 channel audio/performance with Olaf Pyras, wood, meadow, ø 3.50 machtmal alte Brüderkirche, Cassel Photos © Clara Oppel, Udo P. Leis

inhale-exhale

Hygiene masks are installed serially in the form of two fields (120 x 150 cm) on two walls facing each other. Minimalist breathing sounds whisper from one wall to the other.

transient

The bats spend their winter in this corridor, almost 100 m long. In summer though, they live outside. Obviously the textures of sounds they make there, in an environment with meadows, castle wall, the banks of a lake, are richly varied. Summer or winter though, their sound frequencies are inaudible to us.

texere

2020, sound installation.392 speakers, audio system, 8 channel composition, 3.8 x 11 mRischArt_Projekt, Gasteig, München The composition consists of speech sounds, speech frag-ments, breathing noises, and all kinds of sound creations. One hears sounds which move along the wall at intervals of time and overlap. The sound of the meandering tones is simultaneously reflected back…

Publications

Breathing Space

Breathing Space

Published by VfmK Verlag für moderne Kunst GmbH, Wien, 12/2022 Language German/English,  Hardcover, 22 x 22 cm, 128 pages, 77 ills. in color ISBN 978-3-903439-58-0 With texts from Friedrich W. Block, Florian Neuner, Johannes Rauchenberger, Olaf Pyras, Sylvia Wendrock, Reiner Zettl to be ordered from: https://www.vfmk.org/books/clara-oppel-breathing-space

News

Refractions

Refractions

Klangkunst-Ausstellung im Palais Bellevue, Kassel 2. September bis 1. Oktober 2023 Als Auftakt des Programms der Stiftung Brückner-Kühner im Palais Bellevue gestaltet Clara Oppel eine raumgreifende Audioinstallation: ein verwobenes, schwingendes und begehbares Gebilde, das aus jeder Hörrichtung anders klingt. Der Klang aus Soundscapes der Natur sowie Stimmen und Gedanken bröselt bis ins Mikroskopische hinein, so…
Holding Breath

Holding Breath

Exhibition Saturday, 26. August 2023, 13:00-19:30 @Kongreßbad, Julius-Meinl-Gasse 7A, 1160 Vienna. Künstler*innen: Zavoloka (UA), Alex Franz Zehetbauer (USA/AT), mit Christian Schröder (AT), Clara Oppel (AT), Tahereh Nourani (IR) und DJ KJOS (AT).
Bildraum Bodensee

Bildraum Bodensee

Exhibition July 21, 2023 – September 12, 2023, Bildraum Bodensee Opening: Friday, July 21, 7 p.m.

Texts

ART OR SOUND?

The large exhibition room of the Marburg Kunstverein, enclosed on three sides, is the present home of the title piece, Breathing Space, 2015: 5,400 dome loudspeakers, 8 channel audio, cables. If one enters the room during one of the silent breaks, one is faced with two frames of reference: from the neighbour-ing rooms, in the…

Inner and outer spaces

What does art sound like? Well, mostly it doesn’t sound at all. Traditional painting and sculpture don’t have an audio track. Until recently, the temples of art were silent, often almost devoutly silent, except for banging doors and so on – sounds that didn’t come from the works of art. Such sounds were certainly not…

Humankind is a shadows dream

from Pindar: Eighth Pythian Ode Text: Sylvia WendrockTranslation: Keith David Harris You can vanish into thin air trying to understand this sentence. It comes from the Epikinae, a collection of odes by the fifth century B.C. Greek poet Pindar. He wrote choral poetry for the winners of the Olympic Games. This was intended as a…