Guitar

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Richard Garet Guitar Heroes, 2012
‘Each playback device activates a distinct sound exciter that is attached to the neck of each electric guitar, consequently vibrating the strings and generating a field of harmonics and overtones in real time. The sound generated by the guitars masks the sources and subsequently creates an uncanny and disorienting sound that fills the space. As the visitors navigate the floor and approach the guitars, they have the option of accessing the source material, or simply walking away with what just lays on the surface of the work.”‘

Hear it here

 

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John Baldessari Person with Guitar (Red), 2005
5 color screenprint mounted on sintra, 35 x 41 in

 

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Céleste Boursier-Mougenot from here to ear (v.15), 2011
‘From Here To Ear introduces a flock of 70 brightly plumed Zebra Finches to a gallery-turned-aviary to live among iconic Gibson Les Paul and Thunderbird bass guitars. At turns ambient and melodic, a constantly changing soundscape emerges as the finches explore their environment, eating, nesting and perching on the amplified instruments.’

 

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Tom Friedman Untitled (silver-foil guitarist) & Moot, 2004, 2014

aluminum and wood with colored pencil

Paint and Styrofoam

 

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Natascha Stellmach Scream, 2010
‘In 2008 Australian artist Natascha Stellmach installed a joint in a commercial Berlin gallery, containing hash and the alleged ashes of Kurt Cobain. An international call was sent out – via press release – inviting six volunteers to join her in smoking the ashes of the dead rock star, in a private, undocumented ritual, to explore commemoration and attachment. If the smoking of the ashes was the final act – then Complete Burning Away, Stellmach’s dramatic exhibition is the epilogue. The project boldly interrogates the public ownership of celebrities and critiques the role of the artist, the media and contemporary art in society. More than that, this exhibition is a reflection on suicide and tragedy and the artist’s chosen means to pay her respects. One 2-wall video installation, Scream, offers an intense sonic requiem where the aforementioned guitar howls as it is punched and smashed against a wall by a shadowy figure until it ‘dies’. “The video Scream is a disturbing metaphor and easily associated with the image of the mythic artist hanging by a thread and beaten into a corner by the adoration of his public.”’

 

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Yoshihiko Satoh Various, 2002 – 2005
‘Yoshihiko Satoh takes mass-produced goods that have become part of our every day life, enlarges and/or multiplies them, creating sculptures that unleash the energy residing in their function and shape. In 2002, he won the Kirin Art Award Grand Prix for “Present Arms”, a 12-neck guitar conceived as a challenge to a rock guitarist he idolizes.”’

 

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David Bowie Acoustic Guitar, Space Oddity era (1970s)
‘The vendor won a signed Bowie guitar in a 2002 online charity auction (for ‘Bikers Against Drunk Drivers’) but it arrived in a damaged state. He contacted BowieNet who put him in touch with Bowie’s management company, who promptly organized the sending of a replacement guitar. This guitar arrived with clear evidence of having been used (scratches on scratch plate) so it is thought that this could have been one that David had been playing at the time. The vendor has supplied the auction house with proof of his purchase from the charity auction. The guitar is “…signed with an inscription ‘Ground Control To Major Tom’ by David Bowie, dated 2003. This is one of only two known guitars that have been signed with this inscription.”’

 

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Christian Marclay Guitar Drag, 1999
‘Guitar Drag is a 14-minute video depicting a pickup truck dragging an amplified, electric guitar tied by a rope across a Texas roadway to its aggressive destruction. The many-layered video work references the practice of smashing guitars during rock concerts and demonstrates Marclay’s interest in inventing new types of sound. The piece was also created in response to the 1998 murder of 49-year-old James Byrd, Jr. of Jasper, Texas by three white supremacists and the tragedy’s widespread repercussions.’

 

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Haim Steinbach Untitled (breast mugs, Marilyn guitar) I-2, 1990
‘For more than four decades, Haim Steinbach has explored the psychological, aesthetic, cultural and ritualistic aspects of collecting and arranging already existing objects. His work engages the concept of “display” as a form that foregrounds objects, raising consciousness of the play of presentation. Steinbach selects and arranges objects – which range from the natural to the ordinary, the artistic to the ethnographic – thereby emphasizing their identities, inherent meanings and associations.’

 

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Simon Dybbroe Møller The Guitarist, 2018
framed C-Print

 

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Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley and Enrique Morente Sensational Fix, 2010
‘For the presentation of the exhibition “Sonic Youth etc .: Sensational Fix” exhibition at the 2 de Mayo Art Center in Móstoles, the band’s Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley performed together with Enrique Morente. A magma of quejíos, flamenco rhythms, downloads of electric guitars, palms and percussions. The paths of rock and flamenco confronted and fused by two of the exponents who have investigated the most in their forms. Ten minutes of intense music, a train wreck.’

 

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Franck Tordjmann Big Boss, 2005
‘Franck Tordjmann was a french sculptor and painter, born in 1958. His only material is plexiglas. Of great purity, his compositions play with transparency and light to create emotion and reflection. These aerial sculptures, unique and original works, are always composed of guitars and other musical instruments, all entirely composed of plexiglass.’

 

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Alice Pamuk Sans ampli, 2015
‘Alice Pamuk films a guitarist and a bassist strumming the strings of their instrument and responding to each other, without uttering a word, through only concentration guided by listening to sounds. Filmed in close-up, these two musicians, who can be imagined from their outfits rather shining in a metal-like repertoire, produce thin sounds without amplifiers, which contrast with the frenzy of the hands chaining together improvisations. The camera gets closer to the instruments and faces whose identity captivates, but the proximity does not allow us to better capture the intimate and shared journey leading to composition.’

 

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Sandvik Coromant The world’s first unbreakable guitar, 2019
‘While no one at Sandvik Coromant set out to spoil the fun for a host of rockers, the Swedish-based supplier of cutting tools and inserts decided to create an instrument that could not be smashed, even by the most enthusiastic guitar destroyer.

‘It just so happened that a machining process developer at the company, who had played guitar since his youth, idolized Yngwie Malmsteen, one of Sweden’s top guitar virtuosos and a famous (or perhaps infamous!) guitar smasher. The developer, Henrik Loikkanen, understood the challenges he was about to undertake: “We had to design a guitar that is unsmashable in all the different ways you can smash a guitar.”

‘Loikkanen started his research by watching YouTube videos of Malmsteen destroying his instruments, and he discovered that the guitars typically cracked at the joint between the neck and the body. That knowledge led the Sandvik engineers to eliminate that joint by machining the guitar’s neck and fretboard from one solid bar of stainless steel.’

 

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Julian Opie Steve Playing Guitar, 2006
Aluminium, steel, polycarbonate and vinyl with interior lights

 

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Ed Stilley Various, 1979 – 1993
‘In 1979, Ed Stilley was leading a simple life as a farmer and singer of religious hymns in Hogscald Hollow … Arkansas. Life was filled with hard work and making do for Ed, his wife Eliza, and their five children, who lived in many ways as if the second half of the twentieth century had never happened.

‘[In 1979] while plowing his field, he became convinced he was having a heart attack… [A]s he lay there in the freshly plowed dirt, Ed received a vision from God, telling him that he would be restored to health if he would agree to do one thing: make musical instruments and give them to children.

‘… Beginning with a few simple hand tools, Ed worked tirelessly for twenty-five years to create over two hundred instruments, each a crazy quilt of heavy, rough-sawn wood scraps joined with found objects. A rusty door hinge, a steak bone, a stack of dimes, springs, saw blades, pot lids, metal pipes, glass bottles, aerosol cans—Ed used anything he could to build a working guitar, fiddle, or dulcimer. On each instrument Ed inscribed “True Faith, True Light, Have Faith in God.”’

 

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Radio/Guitar (Barbara Ess & Peggy Ahwesh) Nine, 2001
”Radio Guitar’ was recorded in Barbara’s studio, NYC on audio cassette over a period of 3 days (except for one piece recorded in Callicoon, NY).’

 

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Lygia Pape Concerto Tupinambá, 2000
Two red-feathered chairs with guitar

 

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Raymond Pettibon Untitled, 2003

 

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Ragnar Kjartansson Woman in E, 2016
‘Unlike the G-scale, which is commonly used in love songs, E-minor conveys a melancholy, reflective feel. In Kjartansson’s new work created for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, this pensive chord reverberates throughout the museum building, growing stronger as it bounces off the architecture.

‘”Woman in E” revolves around a single, central figure: a woman dressed in a gold gown, standing on a rotating pedestal. The central figure plays the electric guitar without accompaniment, alone with the instrument and an amp. The atmosphere around her glitters as the notes rebound off the walls and ceiling, creating a deep, guttural tremolo. With its ethereal feel and symbolic references, the work conjures Detroit’s history as a hotbed of sonic innovation that gave birth to Motown and Techno alike.’

 

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Marco Fusinato Extended Breakdown in ‘E’, 2018
‘Extended Breakdown featured a single locked groove repeating a distorted E chord. When played, each revolution caused the groove to breakdown and the sound to eventually become white noise. What began as distinct and minimal, over time becomes the opposite, a wash of frequencies across the spectrum and maximalist noise. Tuning to detuning.’

 

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Bill Woodrow Twin-Tub with Guitar, 1981
‘Here Woodrow has cut a sculpture of an electric guitar from a discarded Hotpoint washing machine. This odd conjunction brings together two symbols of Western consumerism. Woodrow explained ‘The guitar was a pop icon and the washing machine was an everyday, domestic item. So it was bringing the two things together like a slice of life’.’

 

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Mika Vainio Heijastuva, 2011
‘Long and slowly developing Heijastuva is a Mika Vainio’s implementation of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s guitar feedback experiments from 70’s.’

 

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Plastic Jesus The Art of Noise, 2021
‘A mixed medium piece by renowned street artist Plastic Jesus titled “The Art of Noise”, which features a genuine cherry red Fender Stratocaster that appears to be melting but is entirely playable.’

 

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Naama Tsabar Untitled (Double Face), 2020
‘This is an excerpt of Naama Tsabar’s performance “Untitled (Double Face) at the art fair Frieze Los Angeles 2020, a performance that coopts and upends the guitar solo through a conjoining and doubling. Using two guitars grafted together, Tsabar and a partner turn the seemingly masturbatory performative gesture into an act based on intimacy and cooperation.”’

 

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Chris Gilmour Beatles Guitars & Fender Stratocaster, 2018
‘Chris has chosen a simple but meaningful material for his work: in first place because corrugated cardboard is usually employed to pack and ship the artist’s work, rather than physically representing the oeuvre itself (the container, in this case, becomes the content).’

 

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PUNKASILA Kristiantoro Seri Punkasila (KSP) Hybrid M16/Grenade Launcher Electric Bass, 2006-2007
‘Formed by Danius Kesminas, PUNKASILA features seven graduates and current students from the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) in Yogyakarta and Kesminas – seven Indonesians and a bule. PUNKASILA play custom-made, hand crafted mahogany guitars, built to simulate M-16’s, AK-47’s and other weapons. They wear camouflage-patterned hand-painted batik, tailored as military fatigues and play originals songs which highlight the multitude of acronyms and abbreviations that describe the full spectrum of Indonesian political, cultural and religious life.’

 

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Rudi Mantofani Various, 2006 – 2011
‘Indonesia born and based artist Rudi Mantofani has created a set of mutant guitars that are entirely hand-crafted, as in not transformed from ready-made guitars. At first glance, these slick guitars by Rudi Mantofani suggest absolute certainty. Yet they are wickedly unplayable: it would be impossible to strike even one note. Mantofani has crafted the guitars himself from scratch: they are not transformed ready-made objects, but custom-made affronts to common usage and common sense, transformed into ‘visual parables.”

 

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Pierre Henry & Michel Colombier& Maurice Béjart Psyché Rock, 1967
‘Psyche Rock is a piece created in 1967 by Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier (this is a director of film music), which is part of the suite of dances Mass for the present time. This is undoubtedly the best-known title of this work. It is also interpreted by Ypersound and consists of guitar, bells, drums, zithers, pipa (a traditional Chinese instrument) and electronic music. It is part of the musical movement of musique concrete and more generally in the movement of industrial music with a traditional method of prophetic message, critical and esoteric its own. It is loosely based, the rhythmic level, on the song Louie Louie, written by Richard Berry. This piece has the distinction of being read backwards without significant change in the music.’

 

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Simon Blackmore Weather Guitar, 2006
‘Weather guitar is a robotic guitar player that responds to variations in weather conditions. The focus of this project is an attempt to draw parallels between the scientific inquiry of measuring and quantifying the natural elements, and the romantic notion of the weather acting as a source of artistic inspiration.’

 

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Dan Graham & Glenn Branca Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay, 1983
‘A restructuring of the gaze informs this installation/performance work, produced and performed by Graham and musician Glenn Branca for Graham’s 1983 retrospective exhibition Pavilions at the Kunsthalle in Berne, Switzerland. The audience was seated on the right and the musicians on the left, both facing (and observing each other through) a large two-way mirror. A video screen seen through the two-way mirror showed a six-second time-delayed view of the room. Graham writes, “Conventionally, the audience identifies with the performer by gazing directly at his/her frontal, eye view. In this set-up the audience must look to the mirror in order to see the performer playing his/her instrument. At the same time a member of the audience sees other audience members (including himself) gazing.”‘

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David, Ha ha, you are forgiven. *does that Catholic hands-forgiveness gesture circa my chest that I don’t how to do* Mm, no, I never had a perm. Wait, I had my hair straightened a couple of times back when I wore it really long because mine was wavy, does that count? I did dye mine black two or three times, same general period. I liked your poem! Big time! ** dora, Hi, and, well, thanks for that. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, You tell him, ha ha. But maybe don’t kill him. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I forgive him for inadvertently inspiring ‘Les Miz’. I realise I haven’t seen ‘Une chambre en ville’ and will make haste to correct that. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. I’m very pro-‘Exile on Main Street’, which is why it’s so strange to me that they seemed to lose it entirely in an instant afterwards. Other big bands of that era had sudden drop-offs too, like The Kinks after ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ (although I do love occasional songs by them after that whereas the Stones are total goners starting with ‘GHS’ for me). The Who went south fast at a certain point. Etc. I totally agree with you about the strange lack of a documentary or brainy commentary on Ozzie Nelson’s work. His character not having a job seems like a deliberate part of the package’s magic, but it would be very interesting to find out just how calculated all that seeming brilliance really was. I’d like to see the same kind of doc or writing about ‘Green Acres’, another work of auteurist TV series genius in my book. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Ouch, your poor brain. Your love of yesterday is a heaven on earth kind of gift, so thank you. Yes, always Hydrox, never Oreo! I do think I’m going to wander over to that store any day now. I’m also longing for some whipped cream in a spray can. Love teaching you how to play any song you want on a guitar in 30 seconds, so what is it?, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. There’s a copy of ‘Zero’ on Dvd available on eBay for $16.17 here, but that’s the only place I could find it. Oh, that’s very, very good news about your Dad. How is he doing today? Does he have a return home date yet? ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Wow, studied with George Crumb, not bad. I think, like virtually all experimental filmmakers in the current day, the movie world and theaters and almost all festivals in the US ignore his work, and he shows his stuff mostly in Europe or in US cubbyholes and art museum settings. The official film world is very grimly conservative these years. ‘Goats Head Soup’ might be slightly more enlivened than the albums that followed, but that seems to be about it. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. I’m very happy that his work intrigued you. Yay, you made the swap. I must say I don’t envy you on writing about Bresson as the mere thought of his work tongue-ties me, but I bet you’ll come up with great things, and I can’t wait to read your thoughts someday. You’re officially 20 now! Big whoop! Basically, my recent b’day was kind of nothing out of the ordinary: hung out with Zac, ate with friends, aka things I do all the time anyway. And I feel totally fine with that extremely lowkey occasion-marking in retrospect, if that helps. I didn’t know Jarman was going to make a film of ‘Narrow Rooms’. How incredibly interesting. Huh. At what point in time was he going to make it? The big A’s vibes are most welcome, thank you. I’ll use them accordingly. I’m going to see a Rivette film (‘Duelle’) tonight as part of the Cinematheque’s Rivette retrospect-in-progress. I loved it way back when, and we’ll see how it holds up. I hope your b’day today (right?) does every tiny little thing you want it to. ** Right. I thought I would give that good old-fashioned instrument the guitar some props and attention today, so there you go. See you tomorrow.