On 16 November at 7.00 pm, the Lia Rumma Gallery in Milan will present a concert/performance featuring the Dutch artist Dré Wapenaar and Lia Rumma herself.
In his new pavilion devoted to the musical instrument, and named SOLO for YOU Piano Pavilion, Wapenaar will play CANTO OSTINATO by Simeon ten Holt and SONG OF RELEASE by Joep Franssens. The only person to appreciate the all-absorbing acoustic experience will be Lia Rumma who will listen to the performance of the artist/pianist seated on a sofa within the pavilion. The video cameras will capture the fabric of expressions and words that will be established between performer and listener in the tent, as well as the details of the pianist’s hands as they move on the keyboard, projecting the magnified images to the outside world, in this case the public on the ground floor of the gallery. The form and geometry of the shell in SOLO for YOU Piano Pavilion are designed to accompany the modulation of the grand piano and therefore to concentrate and amplify the sound, making it reverberate around a single listener. It exalts the sensorial experience of the single listener who has music performed on request and exclusively for him/herself.
By employing the materials, underlying logic and production procedures of architecture and design, Wapenaar gives sculptural form to the Bauhaus social ideal of “total theatre” which was only put into practice, in an exemplary manner, in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall built by Hans Scharoun in the sixties. Indeed, the artist defines his “pavilions” as "total sculptures" where the public in the centre are not spectators but part of the performance. Sculpture, architecture – even the natural light falls from above in this new pavilion – design and art all intertwine and merge in this new work by the Rotterdam-based artist.
