Music at a glance – Newspaper Kommersant No. 193 (7394) dated 10/18/2022

An exhibition “A Second of Eternity” by Henri Sala has opened at the Fondation Francois Pinault Museum in Paris. A series of videos in which timeless music collides with real world events are presented on huge screens in the building of the former Trade Exchange. The correspondent of “Kommersant” in France was eyeing the music of the Albanian artist Alexey Tarkhanov.

Henri Sala lives in Germany and studied in France. But he belongs to the last generation of artists of socialist Albania. On his contemporaries, the machine of Soviet art broke down, leaving, however, traces in the biography. Partly about this is his work “Take Over” (2017), which reproduces piano keys on two giant screens, on which revolutionary hymns are played. On one – “La Marseillaise”, on the other – “International”, which are sometimes mixed with each other to the degree of indistinguishability.

This is an occasion to recall the history of the Internationale, which was born in 1871, almost a century ago, the motif of the Marseillaise, and only in 1888 received its own music, now known more than words. One melody on the screen is played by a mechanical piano, the other by a live musician. Instruments change places, melodies – in pieces, interpretations, Anri Sala recalls that both hymns, which were symbols of the struggle for freedom, at some moments turned out to be symbols of oppression, colonialism and terror, the destruction of the world to the ground. White and black keys, gaining independence, march before us like ruthless regiments. Sound, image, political history and music history mingle in one ever-swaying mood of delight and fright.

Another music of violence is heard in 1395 Days without Red (2011), where we follow the movement of a woman through the city against the backdrop of the first part of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetic Symphony. The woman runs, stops, we catch her uneven breathing, mixing with the tempo of the philharmonic orchestra and even changing it. Where the heroine is in a hurry, we do not understand until we find out that this is a free reproduction of an hour from the almost four-year siege of Sarajevo. The way to the rehearsal of the city orchestra is interrupted by pauses and dashes through the streets, shot through by snipers. And the name “days without red” recalls that the townspeople had to remain invisible so as not to catch a bullet from the heights surrounding the city.

The most notable of the installations with which visitors will begin their tour of the exhibition, although Sala himself clearly sees it as the climax, is Time No Longer (2021) in the central rotunda. Under the glass dome of the former Merchant Exchange with a restored picturesque frieze, naively representing the peaceful triumph of international trade in the 19th century, a huge screen works. On it, a player with a record is spinning in weightlessness, which seems to be moving along the earth’s orbit against the backdrop of sunrises and sunsets.

This work is sounded by the music of Olivier Messiaen – “Quartet for the End of Time”, first played in the 1940s in a German concentration camp for prisoners of war, where the composer ended up after the defeat of the French army. The Quartet was composed for cello, piano, clarinet and violin, but Henri Sala reproduces it with clarinet and saxophone. Clarinet from the 1940s, saxophone joined in the 1980s. “One of the first African American astronauts, saxophonist Ronald McNair, planned to make the first professional recording in space. He died immediately after takeoff, along with the entire crew of the Challenger spacecraft,” says the artist. “His intention remained in limbo, somewhere between earth and sky … “duet”. Rather, they are ghosts or shadows of each other.”

The central rotunda is bypassed by a vestibule with showcases from the century before last, preserved from the old museum interior. In these polished wooden aquariums, the graphics of Henri Sala are displayed, accompanied by old engravings representing the inhabitants of the sea. Next to sea cucumbers or moray eels, the artist shows his watercolors, scraps of political maps of the world depicting sections of the territories of different countries, looking as strange as outlandish sea creatures.

The artist says that every time a new exhibition space forces him to change, reprogram the connection between different installations. Perhaps many will remember his work “The Last Resort”, which in free 2018 was visiting Moscow. One of the drums included in it, suspended under the ceiling of the Garage, also stands in the corner of the Exchange (Another Solo in the Doldrums, 2012).

I was lucky, the new exhibition at the Pinot Museum was presented by Henri Sala himself. For a modern artist, he may have taken his work too seriously, on the other hand, he honestly tried to tell as much as possible about what was behind them. Critical reviews for “A Second of Eternity” are all excellent. However, it is interesting how the public will perceive the exhibition. Her main claim to contemporary art is the impossibility of a direct and unclouded knowledge of the look at the work. To understand it, you need to listen to the history of its creation, penetrate into the system of author’s associations and conclusions. In other words, the work must be accompanied by its author. It seems to me that the authors of the exposition also understand this: for the duration of the exhibition, Henri Sala will remain in Paris as one of the main exhibits, a whole series of conferences, performances and concerts is planned.