Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

More than a mid-career survey, the exhibition offers a new conceptual perspective on the artist’s work over the past decade, exploring its poetic and political dimensions from the standpoint of one of its central principles: the notion of co-presence. This concept refers first and foremost to the coexistence of voices, perspectives and singular experiences in Lozano-Hemmer’s works: to the interactions between strangers, to the situations elicited by the dialogic devices deployed by the work. However, co-presence also evokes other, more asymmetrical relationships, such as forced cohabitations and power relations, and speaks to the interplay of gazes and bodies subjected to contemporary techniques of surveillance and control.

The exhibition will present major works including the world premiere of Sphere Packing: Bach a spherical room fit with 1074 speakers each of which plays a different composition from Johann Sebastian Bach. The piece focuses the entire musical production of the composer in a single dense multi-channel structure that visitors can enter.

Subtitled Public (2005), Vicious Circular Breathing (2013), Pan-Anthem (2014), and Zoom Pavilion (a collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko, 2015) will also be featured in the exhibition.

Co-produced by the MAC and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the exhibition will be presented at the Museo de arte contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico, from March to August 2019 and SFMOMA from April 25 to September 6, 2020.