ANTHONY MCCALL

At the centre of the exhibition is Raised Voices (2020) a large-scale immersive installation comprised of digital projection, sound and haze. McCall’s ‘solid light works’ occupy a space between cinema, sculpture and drawing, with beams of light creating sculptural forms as they are projected through mist within the space. The viewer becomes an active participant in the work, dissected by an undulating light that slowly shifts and changes.

In Raised Voices, there are two competing and intersecting forms within the horizontal projection; an incomplete ellipse that varies in its diameter, and a straight diagonal line that splinters in two as it turns through 180 degrees. The forms develop according to a precise durational structure, shifting at a pace that can sometimes be indiscernible, yet presenting itself continuously within the conical field of light.

The work also features a soundtrack, composed in collaboration with the musician David Grubbs. McCall and Grubbs first met in 2007, their first collaborative work being Leaving (With Two-Minute Silence) (2009–10). This was McCall’s first solid light work including sound since the 1970s, the soundtracks of which were previously the drone- like mechanical purring of the 16mm projector. The subsequent use of digital projectors, with their relative silence, gave an absence of sound, and it was through collaboration with Grubbs that McCall sought to fill this aural void.

Like Leaving (With Two-Minute Silence) the soundtrack to Raised Voices similarly utilises the sounds of the urban environment, though this time to more intimidating effect. Across the sixteen-minute cycle of the film, there are four sections of sound each of which lasts for thirty seconds. In the far distance a riot seems to be unfolding as a chorus of sirens and car-horns make themselves felt and the faintly discernible roars of a baying crowd are heard, the eponymous raised voices, themselves supplanted by the rumbling engine of a low-flying helicopter. Though the work remains primarily silent, with the sonic events occurring far beyond the gallery walls, the repeated interruptions become unsettling.

Presented alongside Raised Voices are a number of works on paper that give an insight into McCall’s working processes. His drawings function as both a mathematical formula for the works as well as the two-dimensional working out of their three- dimensional volumetric form, evidencing the meticulous planning that goes into each installation. A series of seven charcoal drawings for Raised Voices show the ‘footprints’ of the projection at seven consecutive moments, freeze-frames that return the light projection to its graphic referent.

Anthony McCall (*1946, St. Paul’s Cray) lives in New York City. He is currently the subject of two major solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (until 27 April 2025), and Guggenheim, Bilbao (until 11 October 2024), as well as an exhibition opening at MAAT, Lisbon in October 2024. Previous solo exhibitions include Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2019), Pioneer Works, Brooklyn and The Hepworth Wakefield (both 2018), Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2016), LAC Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano (2015), Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2014), Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (all 2013), Project Room, New York; Tate Modern, London and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (all 2012), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2011) and Serpentine Gallery, London (2007).

For further information and press inquiries, please contact Felix Lorenz-Wohnhas (felix@spruethmagers.com).