GERHARD RÜHM • 24 FAVORITE WORKS
Under the title »24 FAVORITE WORKS«, Norrlandsoperan is presenting works by the Vienna-based writer, composer and visual artist Gerhard Rühm, who will celebrate his 95th birthday in February 2025, from November 9 to December 14.
The show in the Vita kuben exhibition space includes visual works on paper from six decades — from the 1970s to the present day. The presentation is complemented by an adaptation of Gerhard Rühm’s eight-channel sound installation for the series TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum [TONSPUR 25] in stereo format in the foyer of the gallery space. »PARADIESISCHE PASSAGE« (Paradisiacal Passage) from 2008 is based on a text written by Gerhard Rühm in Esperanto, the “most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world, created in 1887 by Ludwig L. Zamenhof in 1887”. The musical part was played by Rühm himself on a celesta — a keyboard instrument that produces a magical sound. A display case contains materials relating to this sound work, which is intended for the public space: texts, notations, printed matter, documentary photos, notes. The translation of the Esperanto text sung by a women’s choir and the concept for the installation, written by Gerhard Rühm, are available as printouts in the exhibition.
A video message from Gerhard Rühm, produced in the artist’s apartment in Vienna on November 4, enables visitors to the exhibition to ‘get to know’ the artist. Due to his advanced age, Gerhard Rühm had to refrain from traveling to Umeå — the venue of his first solo exhibition in Sweden — with a heavy heart.
Gerhard Rühm is undoubtedly one of Austria’s most important artistic personalities with a major impact on the German-speaking world. By combining very different interests, talents and professions in his work since the early 1950s, he has anticipated today’s intermedial art. Furthermore, as a co-founder of the Wiener Gruppe, this legendary Austrian artist formation dedicated to the experimental in its own literature, in particular the conception of language as optical and acoustic material, he is an integral part of the art history of the second half of the 20th century. His own artistic work is inspired by August Stramm, Kurt Schwitters, Gertrude Stein, Carl Einstein und Paul Scheerbart.
Rühm studied piano and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. This was followed by private lessons with the twelve-tone composer Josef Maria Hauer. In the 1950s he began producing sound poetry, spoken word, visual poetry, photomontages and books. His works are often located at the border between music, language, gestures and the visual.
Gerhard Rühm taught at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg from 1972 to 1996. He has received numerous prizes, including the America Award in Literature 2022 and the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art 2013, as well as the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts 2014. In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cologne, Germany.
In Vita kuben Gerhard Rühm will show a series of his personal favorite works on paper. Visual music and poetry in the artist’s typical pencil or ballpoint pen drawings — very often on music paper — contrast with graphic meditations, collages and colored ink drawings. All of them are on loan from the artist’s private collection and their titles, such as »PAUSENBILD« (Pause Picture), »DAS GRAS WACHSEN HÖREN« (Hearing the grass grow), »SYMPHONISCHE MOMENTE« (Symphonic Moments), »METAMUSIK« (Meta-Music), »TONBILD« (Sound Picture) or »KLANGKÖRPER« (Body of Sound), always reflect the trained composer and pianist’s great affinity with all things sonic.
Following on from Sabine Groschup’s Vita kuben exhibition with works from her work complex on the widely known John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt, Germany, a text work by Gerhard Rühm will be presented that was created shortly before the exhibition opened. It is a so-called acrostic — a poem in which the initial letters form a word or a sentence. It is dedicated to John Cage — an artist whom Gerhard held in very high esteem and with whom he was in contact — and was created at the invitation of the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt, which will produce the text as a so-called ‘sound year panel’ for the year 2530 — Rühm’s 600th birthday — and install it in St. Burchardi’s Church, the performance venue for John Cage’s »ORGAN2/ASLSP«.
The plaque joins a total of 639 sound year plaques that impressively visualize and contextualize the performance period of Cage’s composition. In addition to many other current projects, Gerhard Rühm is currently working on this composition by Cage for piano or organ solo — to be played as slowly as possible (»ASLSP«) — in order to be able to play it himself in the near future.
The exhibition »GERHARD RÜHM. 24 FAVORITE WORKS« is generously supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.
GERHARD RÜHM was born in Vienna in 1930, where he has been living and working again since the end of 2023 after decades in Cologne.
The autumn program 2024 in Vita kuben with exhibitions by Austrian artists Sabine Groschup and Gerhard Rühm – both are the first solo presentations in Sweden – is curated by Georg Weckwerth. He is one of the foremost curators of sound art and founder and artistic director of the TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien with two locations in the Museumsquartier in Vienna. Georg Weckwerth was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica 2010 as an art mediator. He was born in 1965 in Herzberg am Harz, Germany, and lives and works in Vienna, Hattorf am Harz and Berlin.
GERHARD RÜHM.
24 FAVORITE WORKS
9.11.-14.12.2024
Vita kuben //
Norrlandsoperan, Umeå, Sweden
Curated by Georg Weckwerth, invited by Helena Wikström
Supported by
