Alina Grasmann: The Grand Buffet

Fridman Gallery is honored to announce Alina Grasmann’s third exhibition with the gallery following a three-month residency in Beacon. The Grand Buffet is an homage to, and a celebration of, Haus Schminke, an iconic example of organic architecture in Saxony, Germany designed by Hans Scharoun. A prime example of classical modernism, Haus Schminke has become another site of play and inspiration for Grasmann. As before, she works with the interiors and exteriors of real spaces, adding layers of mythologies, riddles, and personal touches.

It’s a party at Haus Schminke and in The Grand Buffet! Scharoun wanted to make the home a fun experience for the children living in it, incorporating slides, hatches to climb out of, and colorful peepholes. In her paintings, Grasmann echoes this playful touch by hiding objects amongst the household items, having Looney Tunes playing on the televisions, and grappling with the dramatic light and shadows. The series functions as a multi-layered still-life, taking the viewer on a journey through the home and the mind of the artist. As the children of Haus Schminke’s past ran around the space creating their own adventures, the viewer too is having a playful experience interacting with Grasmann’s work, finding all the hidden gems within.

Daniel Neumann
Für Alina: A room tone alteration

In conversation with the new paintings by Alina Grasmann, Neumann has composed a series of tones for a 3.1 channel sound system that is invisibly installed in Grasmann’s exhibition The Grand Buffet. The tones are made with a software synthesizer, developed by Neumann himself called Room Tone Generator (RTG) and an analog modular synth. Selected ambient recordings are added as "subtle echos" of what might occur inside the portrayed spaces. The room tones have the function of altering the background sound of the actual gallery space and infusing it with artificial tonalities – to create a denser atmosphere. In a sense, the tones create a layer of acoustic space that mediates between the flattened representation of spaces from Haus Schminke and the gallery space. The “subtle echos” work similar to how Grasmann is inserting traces of human activity in her paintings, the sounds used hint at human activities, yet never state or articulate them too clearly [no language, no immediate sounds of clear actions]. Neumann created all the sounds on site in the days before the opening as an improvisation with the exhibition which is then frozen in time. He views it as a motion picture soundtrack for which the motion is performed by the gallery visitors who move from painting to painting through the sound field.