Communion with sound has always been bound by time. Meaning in speech and music appears only as their sound events unfold word by word, phrase by phrase, from moment to moment.
My Place works share a different fundamental idea – that of removing sound from time and setting it, instead, in place.
Max Neuhaus, 2001
Sound Work Location: Rooftops of 137–141 Bowery, New York City, Dimensions: 100 x 60 meters
Extant: August 9–11, 1967
Sound Work Location: Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada Dimensions: 4 x 3 x 20 meters Extant: Fall, 1968
Sound Work Location: Jay Street Subway Station, Metropolitan Transit Authority Building, New York City, Dimensions: 30 x 14 x 5 meters
Proposed: 1971, Extant: 1973–1977
- borough Hall subway station, New York
Sound Work reference: Rooms, P.S.1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York City,
Dimensions: 10 x 12 x 11 meters; 11 x 15 x 11 meters. Extant: June 9–26, 1976
Sound Work location: Abby Aldrich Sculpture Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York City Dimensions: 60 x 20 meters Extant: Summer, 1978
Sound Work Location: Old US Customs House Rotunda, New York City, Dimensions: elliptical rotunda, 20 x 60 x 15 meters
Extant: November 19–21, 1976
Exhibition Documenta VI, Kassel
Clearing in Karlsaue Park, Kassel, Germany, Dimensions: 30 meters in diameter, Extant: Summer–Fall, 1977
Sound Work Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands, Dimensions: 10 x 6 x 3 meters
Extant: September 27–30, 1978
Sound Work reference: The Clocktower, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, New York City, Dimensions: 10 x 10 x 11 meters Extant: Fall, 1979
Sound Work Location: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Dimensions: 4 x 5 x 18 meters
Proposed: 1978
Extant: 1979–1989
Sound Work Location: Botanical Garden, St. Paul, Minnesota, Dimensions: rotunda 30 x 20 meters
Extant: Summer 1980.
Sound Work Location: Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.
Dimensions: 22 x 11 x 10 meters. Extant: October 2 - November 6, 1983
Sound Work Reference:
Location: Villa Celle, Pistoia, Italy. Dimensions: 120 x 60 meters
Extant: 1983–1990
Sound Work References:
Location: Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Dimensions: 8 x 16 x 3 meters
Extant: February 11 – March 10, 1983
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France, Dimensions: 10 x 15 x 4 meters
Extant: May 6 – June 12, 1983
Sound Work Location: Pedestrian tunnel, Parc Lullin, Dimensions: 2 x 60 x 2 meters
Extant: June 9 – September 8, 1985
-Exhibition: Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland-
Sound Work Location: Locmine, France, Dimensions: 120 x 200 meters, Proposed: 1985 Extant: 1986–1988
Galerie Eric Franck, Geneva, Switzerland, Dimensions: 4 x 5 x 3 meters
Extant: 1986–1993
Roaring Fork River, Aspen, Colorado, Dimensions: 20 x 30 meters
Extant: Summer–Fall, 1988
Sound Work Location: CNAC, Magasin, Grenoble, France. Dimensions: 2 x 60 x 18 meters
Extant: February 28 – April 10, 1988
Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, France, Dimensions: 8 x 16 x 5 meters
Extant: 1988–1990
Sound Work Exhibition: Einleuchten, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany
Dimensions: 14 x 8 x 11 meters; 14 x 8 x 11 meters
Extant: November 11, 1989 – February 18, 1990
Sound Work Location: Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany, Dimensions: 3 x 2 x 3 meters
Extant: 1989–1992
Location: Galleria Giorgio Persano, Turin, Italy, Dimensions: 7 x 6 x 4 meters; 7 x 6 x 4 meters;
6 x 6 x 4 meters
Extant: 1990–Present
Exhibition: Weg der Schweiz, Lake Luzern, Switzerland. Dimensions: 150 x 100 meters
Extant: Summer–Fall, 1990
Sound Work Location: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, Dimensions: 6 x 8 x 3 meters
Extant: January 28 – April 22, 1990
Location: Galleria Giorgio Persano, Milan, Italy, Dimensions: 5 x 5 x 4 meters
Extant: 1990–1993
Sound Work Reference:
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany
ark adjacent to Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Dimensions: 10 x 20 meters
Extant: 1989–1991
Exhibition: Documenta IX
Sound Work Location: AOK Building, Friedrichplatz 14, Kassel, Germany
Dimensions: 7 x 16 x 3 meters; 7 x 16 x 3 meters; 7 x 16 x 3 meters
Extant: 1992, Present
Collection: Documenta, Accessible from 8 am to 4 pm, Monday through Friday
–Present Participates in Documenta 9, contributing Three to One, a work that would become a permanent installation in the AOK Building in Kassel, Germany
Neuhaus supplements the visual field with sound again inside an office building in Kassel. His permanent work Three to One (1992-present) infuses three glass-walled rooms with distinct but very soft sound textures. These become subtly apparent when one ascends the spiral stairway that connects the floors; the sounds begin to intermingle between levels.
sound-as-a-medium-three-to-one-max-neuhaus-brussels-la-l-ettre-vol-ee-1997Location: Musée d'Art Moderne, Bordeaux, France, Dimensions: 3 x 10 x 4 meters; 3 x 10 x 4 meters
Extant: 1993 - Reactiveted 2024
Piazza di Castello, Turin, Italy, Dimensions: 8 x 4 x 2 meters; 8 x 4 x 2 meters. Extant: 1996–Present
Sound Work for the Stairway of the Musée d'Art Contemporian, Lyon
The site: The space, six by eight meters encloses a stairway twenty meters high.
Location: Lorrainestrasse 1, Bern, Switzerland Dimensions: 3 x 30 meters
Extant: 1999–Present. Collection: Kunst im öffentlichen Raum die Stadt Bern
Sound Work reference: Exhibition, 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, Extant: Summer 1999. Intersection I, dimensions: 15 meters in diameter. Collection: The Estate of Max Neuhaus
Sound work references: Unrealized proposal
An Aural Garden and the creation of new series of Sound Works
Sound Work Location: Château de la Napoule, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France.Dimensions: 4 x 5 meters. Extant: Summer–Fall 2001
Location: Park, Promenade du Pin, Geneva, (Across from entrance to the Cabinet du Stampe)Switzerland. Dimensions: 2.6 x 10 meters. Collection: Fonds Contonal d'Art Contemporian, Geneva Extant: 2002–Present, Accessible 24 hours per day.
Pin, a public park near the center of Geneva - literally an elevated square block of woods with paths, bordered by streets running twenty feet below its edges.
Neuhaus chose an isolated clearing at a high point of the park as the site. Of central interest to him is the site's inherent contradiction - visually one is in a clearing in the woods, aurally one is in the center of a city.
'A work of mine is the result of the interaction between sound and site, rather than being a sound in a site or a site with sound. It is more than site specific: the site is the physical element of the work, what I make the work out of by touching it with sound'. m.n.
Sound Work Location: Saint Luc, Switzerland, Dimensions: 1.5 x 1.5 meters
Extant: 2002–Present.
___
Sound Work Location: Pedestrian island between 46th and 45th Streets, New York City, 1977 Dimensions: triangle 6 x 12 meters
- the Sound Work remains until 1992, to be reinstalled in 2002 as a permanent piece in the Collection of Dia Art Foundation.
Max Neuhaus’s Times Square is a rich harmonic sound texture emerging from the north end of the triangular pedestrian island located at Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets in New York City.
Originally installed at this site from 1977 to 1992, the Times Square Street Business Improvement District (BID), and Christine Burgin collaborated with MTA Arts for Transit and Dia to reinstate the project in May of 2002.
Visitors and residents in Times Square may experience the artwork 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A fundamental of our perception of sound is our sense of distance, how near or far the source of a sound is. Our experience has taught us that sound gradually gets softer as we get further away from it and louder as we approach it. Within the park Neuhaus will create three different zones of sound, which contradict this basic given – sound spaces which one can literally step into and out of.
These works are invisible blocks of sound. Listeners entering into them are enveloped in quiet sound textures. When they leave the sound vanishes. The listening zone is a square five meters on a side. On one axis the sound stops abruptly (within a few centimeters), on the other it gradually fades away. This contradiction forms the foundation for these works, their essences, though, are in the nature of their sounds. These, Neuhaus creates by ear at each site.
The proposal for Fundação de Serralves
The proposal of three scenes
Neuhaus proposes a suite of three scenes for the walkways of the Fundação de Serralves park – three different sound works in the form he calls Sound Volumes.
Sound Volumes
A fundamental of our perception of sound is our sense of distance, how near or far the source of a sound is. Our experience has taught us that sound gradually gets softer as we get further away from it and louder as we approach it. Within the park Neuhaus will create three different zones of sound, which contradict this basic given – sound spaces which one can literally step into and out of.
These works are invisible blocks of sound. Listeners entering into them are enveloped in quiet sound textures. When they leave the sound vanishes. The listening zone is a square five meters on a side. On one axis the sound stops abruptly (within a few centimeters), on the other it gradually fades away. This contradiction forms the foundation for these works, their essences, though, are in the nature of their sounds. These, Neuhaus creates by ear at each site.
Location: Conrad-Eybesfeld, Lebring, Austria, Dimensions: 4 x 5 meters
Extant: 2007–Present. Estate of Bertran and Christine
Location: The Menil Collection, Houston, Dimensions: 4 x 4 meters.
Extant: 2008-Present. Collection: The Menil Collection