DEW. GAIA ∞ COSMOS

Curator • Andreja Borin

Petra Kapš (a.k.a. OR poiesis) is one of the few Slovenian artists whose work focusses on sound installations/performances and on the blending of audio and visual practices. The first solo exhibition of her work at the Maribor Art Gallery will be held in the Judgement Tower because of specific sound-spatial requirements. Petra Kapš invited Nikos Sotirelis (Greece) to collaborate in this exhibition.

Kapš's exhibition in the Judgement Tower features a number of her solo pieces as well as a piece she collaborated on with Nikos Sotirelis. These works are combined especially for this occasion to create a new, cohesive visual and aural whole. The Earth Cosmos, the cosmic serpent, e.g. vibrations and frequencies that affect us and the environment around us yet are (mainly) imperceptible and inaudible form the exhibition's central conceptual axis. The video-sound performance Attraction. Petrification will be on display on the ground floor. The artist draw her inspiration from the primeval Pohorje forest near the Šumik waterfall, a poetically enygmatic place with ancient terrestrial stone beings. The first floor will feature the artist's intermedia sound sculpture and multi-channel composition SELINI, An Instrument of Silence, which explores the changing states of water, the melting of glaciers, and geophony—the deep listening to the Earth and its mineral corporality. The balcony of the Judgement Tower features audio and video fragments from Kapš's extensive work Irreversible Loop. Cosmic Transmission of Glaciers, which touches on the disappearance of mystical planetary beings, along with large-format prints that embody performative stony-cosmic images, created using a scanner, mirror, stones, and the artist's body by following lunar cycles. A new sound piece by Greek sound artist Nikos Sotirelis will be installed in the Judgement Tower's dome. Cosmic radiations—inaudible frequencies in the universe—dominate the area surrounding us. Sounds that are inaudible to the human ear and travel through space are produced by planets, black holes, and anthropogenic radio waves. With the radiance and movement of sound through space, the shape of a sonic dome serves as the foundation for the spatial positioning of the sound field. A new cosmic reality is created in the open evironment of the Judgement Tower, where the sound compositions of Petra Kapš and Nikos Sotirelis meet, interact, and intervene with one another.

dodecaOTTO ambisonic systems • HEKA and Kuber
support • Mauricio Valdés San Emeterio, PiNA, Borut Jerman
organization and coproduction • UGM | Maribor Art Gallery
partners in the project • Minoriti and Maribor Puppet Theatre

Photo • Petra Kapš, OR poiesis, scan, artist's archive