12 MAR – 02 APR 2025.
«Pacifier» solo exhibition of Gary Hill in Madrid
C/ Valencia 17, Madrid
Gary Hill is the first artist to open the OBLIQUO space. We wanted to invite this pioneer of new media art with whom we have been collaborating for many years and who always has pieces that make us think. He opens the space with a manifesto of intentions, we are in the public space, bombarded with useless things that we didn’t know we needed and that we are almost forced to see. This time we are presented with a 3-channel piece, Pacifier, where an atomic bomb made of glass is destroyed into a thousand pieces. This piece from 2014 has all the force and meaning it had a decade ago, and with all the human disasters we are making, perhaps there is nothing left but the massive destruction of the species.
Curator: Mario Gutiérrez Cru. With the support and production of PROYECTOR.
Calle Valencia 17, Madrid.
Monday to Sunday from 9am to 10pm.
Pacifier
3-channel video installation
2014
A blown glass bomb reminiscent of the infamous ‘Fat Man’ was dropped from a height of approximately 9 metres and recorded with a high-speed camera. The bomb becomes a multifaceted mediation on anticipation that oscillates between inconceivable devastation and the vulnerability of the glass form now manifested. In effect, we finally witness a kind of deconstruction from the ultimate symbol of power to a slow spectacle of shattering glass. A descending tone of Shepard accompanies the fall of the object.
SHOWS
James Harris Gallery, Silicon Valley Contemporary Art Fair, San Jose, California, April 10-13, 2014.
“Gary Hill: Depth Charge,” Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan, February 26 – April 22, 2015.
Beijing Media Art Biennale, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China, September 25 — October 9, 2016.
«Gary Hill: Always Rings Twice,» WEST, Den Haag, The Netherlands, February 16 – May 13, 2018.
«Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art: SNAPS OMNI EXPO,» NTUA/Our Museum, November 8, 2019 – January 12, 2020.
«Gary Hill: Momentombs,» Suwon Art Museum, Suwon, Korea, November 26, 2019 — March 6, 2020.
Gary Hill
GARY HILL (n. 1951, Santa Monica, CA) has worked in a wide range of media, including sculpture, sound, video, installation and performance, since the early 1970s.
His long-standing work explores a variety of themes ranging from the physicality of language, synaesthesia and perceptual conundrums to ontological space and viewer interactivity.
Exhibitions of his work have been presented at museums and institutions around the world, including solo exhibitions at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, among others. Commissions include works for the Science Museum in London and the Seattle Central Public Library in Seattle, Washington, and an installation and performance for the Colosseum and Temple of Venus and Rome in Italy. Hill has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and has received numerous awards and honours, including the Leone d’Oro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale (1995), a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (1998), Kurt-Schwitters-Preis (2000) and honorary doctorates from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland (2005) and Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA (2011).