The exhibition Sums & Differences at LÁ Art Museum (Listasafn Árnesinga) in Hveragerði, Iceland, combines works by Gary Hill and Steina and Woody Vasulka. It aims to present the commonalities of their earliest explorations and the subsequent divergence of their artistic practices, their conceptual, performative, and contemplative interpretations of the physical and the immaterial, along three unique trajectories.
This collaborative project offers a new, albeit reductive, path through the artists' extensive practices. The exhibition highlights the mutual exploratory relationship between image and sound. The spectrum of work spans several decades and presents early exploratory pieces which use electronic processing tools that document real-time machine interactions and their performance and use as an augmentation of the senses. Additional works reflect the development of the artists' individual vocabularies and illustrate how they utilize, examine, and break with the algorithm or code uniquely through their experiential research.
Steina's new work Parallel Trajectories and Gary Hill's new piece None of the Above will be premiered at the exhibition, and the rarely seen film works Peril in Orbit and 360-degree space records by Woody Vašulka will be featured in this new unexpected constellation.
Curated by Jennifer Helia DeFelice, Halldór Björn Runólfsson, and Kristín Scheving.
Summa & Sundrung/Sums & Differences is a collaborative project of Listasafn Árnesinga – LÁ Art Museum and the Brno House of Arts – Vasulka Kitchen Brno made possible through the generous support of Thoma Foundation, Museum Council of Iceland, BERG Contemporary, South Iceland Development Fund, Vasulka Foundation, Hveragerði, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and the Statutory City of Brno.
(L to R) Artist Gary Hill, a crop of Woody Vasulka's Peril in Orbit, and Steina's Bokfell.