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Installation view

Kirkhoff is proud to present the American artist Lucas Ajemian’s second solo exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition period is June 8th - July 14th 2006. The opening is June 7th from 5-8 pm.

For this exhibition Ajemian has made the video Out of Nowhere/From Beyond which is a documentation of a performance. Together with his brother, Jason Ajemian, who is a jazz musician, he has transcribed Black Sabbath’s Into the Void from 1971 to a new version of the song performed backwards by a ten piece orchestra with a vocal accompaniment by the artist himself. The song is recorded in a church in Chicago with classical musicians. Jason Ajemian is the conductor.

The project relates to the numerous accusations against heavy metal music’s deliberate inclusion of hidden, occult and satanistic messages, which stimulate people’s subconsciousness and debase morality among young people. By using classic instruments and choosing a church as a location Ajemian elevates the song and plays on people’s fascination of meeting the sublime, seen as an opponent to the music’s supposed manipulating and degrading aspects. Into the Void describes a movement out in space away from the earth, which is marked by physical and mental decay to a new and better world where freedom rules. The journey into the void anonymizes and detaches the traveller from any connection with the surroundings. When Ajemian sings the song backwards he emphasizes the detachment from the context and a loss of language. The incomprehensible sounds create a new musical dialect, which still closely connected to the original adds a reflexive dimension.

The performance has been recorded forward and backward and published on 10’’ vinyl. Besides the singles and the video, Ajemian presents the score, which has been printed on plexiglass with ‘glow in the dark’ paper as background. The original Black Sabbath cover will also be shown, with Yves Klein blue as a reference to Klein's work with voids.

Ajemian generally works with appropriation, structural collapses, translations, distortions and deletions. In several earlier works Ajemian has rearranged and broken down existing connections and materials: by erasing areas on newspaper cut-outs (The Haunt, 2004), by adding gate systems on ads (Turnstiles & Revolving Doors, 2002-) and by redrawing and reconstructing a censored Madonna music video (The Quiet American, 2004).

Lucas Ajemian (b. 1975) lives and works in New York. Simultaneously with the present exhibiion he participates in the group show undo redo at Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel. He is represented in MOMA’s collection.

The gallery presents the video Out of Nowhere/From Beyond at LISTE 06 in Basel on June 12th-18th. At the opening party Lucas and Jason Ajemian will carry out a live performance of the work with 10 musicians from Hochschule für Musik in Basel.