Composition for Face and Hands (ASMR)

Oliver Beer

Twee mannen staan recht tegenover elkaar in een geluidsstudio, met in totaal 4 microfoons boven en achter hen, en tikken of slaan elkaar in het gezicht. Two man stand facing each other in a sound studio, with a total of 4 microphones above and behind them, while slapping each other slightly in the face.
Oliver Beer - Composition for Face and Hands © Oliver Beer. Image_ Oliver Beer

‘at once tender and unsettling, the intensity [of the piece is] (...) viscerally present [even] in the moments of stillness.’

Through Composition for Face and Hands (ASMR), Oliver Beer explores the hidden acoustic properties of bodies. The installation consists of two performative films presented as a diptych and featuring two pairs of percussionists (as male and female counterparts) each using the other’s face as a percussion instrument to explore the different tonalities of the face through a gradual build-up of gestures, from gentle touches to more powerful contact, as a way to create rhythms and musicality through the body. The piece is at once tender and unsettling, the intensity also viscerally present in the moments of stillness.

The work is a development of Beer’s Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) created in 2018.

2023 - Two-channel HD video with sound, 7’45”
Courtesy the artist and Almine Rech
Percussionists: Emma King, Valentina Magaletti, Andre Camacho, Oliver Beer
Director: Carlos Jimenez
Director of photography: Alessandro Di Rosa
Editor: Thomas Goldser @Avenues studio
Sound editor: Simon Todkill
Filmed at the Pool recording studio, London, SE1
Man gekleed in zwarte trui en regenjas kijkt recht in de camera, staand voor een donkerbruine muur met een witte glazen deur aan zijn rechterkant. Man dressed in black sweater and raincoat looks straight into the camera, standing in front of a dark brown wall with a white glass door to his right.

Oliver Beer
°1985, Prembury, UK

Oliver Beer works with sound as his material, turning this invisible force into painting, film, installation and architecture. His practice grows from a rare perceptual gift: an ability to hear the harmonic character of spaces and forms. His films and performances reveal the relationship between sound and form. In caves, vessels, or even the body, a single note can set space into vibration. Beer’s art uncovers the harmonies that bind people, spaces, and cultures together. Oliver Beer’s work are held in major public and private collections including the Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the Arts Council England Collection and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. His practice has been the subject of major solo exhibitions and commissions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Vessel Orchestra, 2019), the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE (Albion Waves, 2023), and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania (permanent acoustic pavilion). He was included in the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and has also presented work at the Centre Pompidou, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Palais de Tokyo, Château de Versailles, MoMA PS1, WIELS and the Sydney Opera House. His practice has also featured in the Sydney, Istanbul, and Lyon Biennales, and in the landmark British Art Show 9.

Oliver Beer lives and works in London and Paris, and is represented by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery (Salzburg, Paris, London, Seoul) and Almine Rech (New York, Shanghai, Brussels).

Pfoto: Oliver Beer at his London studio. Courtesy Ocula. © Alastair Levy