Artist: Iván Navarro

The Music Room
With Hueso Records
MoMA PS1, NY Art Book Fair and Printed Matter
New York, USA

Iván Navarro with Hueso Records is pleased to present The Music Room, at the NY Art Book Fair presented by Printed Matter, at MoMA PS1, opening Thursday September 25th from 6 to 9 pm. Room #S201.

The Music Room is a self-contained project room within the fair, where visitors are invited to listen to musical recordings pressed onto vinyl, at a single central playing station, controlled by one record handler. Inspired by the 1958 Bengali film by the same title (Satyajit Ray’s The Music Room), the installation seeks to create a sensorially rich environment conducive to the experience of listening. Records, selected from Hueso Records’ collection, are played one at a time and the sound is transmitted into the atmosphere through a pair of hand-built speakers. The interior, designed by artist Courtney Smith, is a wall-to-wall padded spongy lounge, with reconfigurable foam alleys, terraces and alcoves where listeners can curl up and contemplate. The Music Room wall space will contain a wrap-around display of the records and various types of publications that Hueso Records is presenting – a combination of HR productions, guest participations, and its private collection of music made by artists.

The Music Room is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project that celebrates the creation of music both formal and informal, and in such is particularly interested in music made by artists who are not necessarily musicians. It will feature a collection of historic recordings by visual and performance artists, as well as recordings of live performances and experiments that are otherwise forgotten, among them are recordings by Lawrence Weiner, La Monte Young, Martin Kippenberger, Rita Ackermann / Dave Nuss, Christian Marclay and many more. Other categories presented in The Music Room are visual and conceptual artists who use music as their primary medium, or collaborations between visual and musical artists, or performance artists whose work involves music. Among the many artists, musicians and artist non-musicians whose work is presented in The Music Room are New York-based Cecilia Vicuña, Rio-based Jarbas Lopes, London-based group Tetine, Chile-based Mario Navarro, and New York-based collective Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere. Finally, Hueso Records’ own publications will also be presented, among them vinyl releases of music by Alvaro Peña, Atom™, Tunde Adebimpe, and Leonino aka Jorge Gonzalez.

Hueso Records is a music label conceived and run by visual artist Iván Navarro. HR began releasing recorded projects in Brooklyn, NY in 2006 as a way of independently publishing music made in collaboration for Navarro’s sculpture and video works. The label quickly expanded to include an ambitious program of finding and releasing historic Chilean music that was never produced at the time of its original recording such as the Pinochet Boys from 1988, Electrodomesticos from 1990, Minimal Technology from 1994 and Acid Call from 2007. HR developed a division called “Undefined Records”, publishing the music of non-musician artists and thinkers, but balances this by publishing creative and experimental projects with established professional musicians. HR currently works with artists and musicians in the US, Chile, Brazil, France, Germany and England.

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