Tarek Atoui: Souffle Continu, Sunflowers
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
★★★☆☆
Attention is a kind of generosity, the philosopher Simone Weil tells us. It’s a useful idea with which to approach the works of Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui, where forms of openness and receptivity – to the viewer, to collaborators and indeed to objects themselves – produce immersive sensory installations that serve as invitations to both listen and be listened to.
Born in 1980 and now based in Paris, Atoui makes work marked by a deep engagement with the physics and physicality of sound. And he explores the resonance and sonic capabilities of all kinds of materials and objects – water, stone, fabric, ceramics – with a particular sensitivity. Individual pieces, existing somewhere between sculpture and idiosyncratic instruments, and each drawn from different ongoing bodies of work within the artist’s oeuvre, are presented at Imma in five groupings that function almost like distinct musical ensembles.
The groupings presented in four gallery rooms under the title Sunflowers are each visually compelling. The installations consist of various resonating objects organised around large square rugs. The titular sunflowers are illuminated structures comprised of lights, trussed speakers, cymbals and percussive diaphragms suspended on boom stands. Other sources of sound are apparent – bubbling water, sheets of steel with contact microphones attached, turntables with modified records spinning – but much is mysterious, with cables snaking everywhere, wooden boxes and even carpet bags emanating tones and whines.
There’s a definite relational intent: the physicality of the viewer is clearly meant to play an integral role in the work, although to exactly what extent this is possible is open to question. Of course, simple proximity to the works cannot but impact upon the manner in which such auditory environments get generated. More involved audience activations of the works are for the most part limited to scheduled workshops and a live event with invited sound practitioners on March 21st.
READ MORE
However, the most compelling grouping of Atoui’s work is Souffle Continu, aptly presented in the Baroque Chapel. Two large wood and glass sound chambers, Wind House #1 and #2 (2024), sit among a mass of heavy flexible air ducts. Air is blown into the chambers, creating deep bass frequencies that the listener can alter by sliding large panels to control airflow. Two other works, Organ Within (2022) and Reedboxes (2022), send air though the nest of duct piping, creating intense church-organ-style tones that set the pipes to rattle and vibrate across the floor. It’s a wonderfully physical set of works that have their genesis in conversations with deaf students – and it is this sense of attention and response to the lived experience of the deaf that gives the works in Souffle Continu their particular power.
It’s also clear how much these pieces, and to a lesser extent those grouped in Sunflowers, are realised through and made in collaboration with numerous other specialists and experts in various fields. It is this sense of Atoui’s practice as itself situated within a nest of conversations, both listening and responding, that give the best works here their particular tone and vitality.
Tarek Atoui’s Souffle Continu is at the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Baroque Chapel until April 19th. Sunflowers is at IMMA’s Gallery 3 until July 19th
