In reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the title of the exhibition "Rabbit Hole", chosen by Oliver Beer, draws on an artistic approach that questions our perception of the world. His works invite us to see, hear, feel, objects, images and sounds differently. Both a musician and an artist by training, Oliver Beer is particularly interested in architecture and the principle of resonance. Since 2007 he has been developing the Resonance Project, a series of performances and films which work with this acoustic phenomenon. For the exhibition space of the macLYON, his research is taken to a new level. Experimenting with the interaction between architecture and the voice, he has created an impressive modular sculpture into which the visitor is invited to enter. This structure vibrates through the intervention of opera singers who perform a score created specifically for the exhibition. This disorientating experience, this passage into a different world, is also to be found in the animated film entitled Alice Falling, made from children’s drawings of Alice falling into the rabbit hole, tumbling into a fantastic universe. The disorder is reinforced by a frieze of objects which seem to be drawn, but are in fact very real: cut through the middle and embedded in the wall. A reference to the March Hare cutting a cup in half to give Alice "half" a cup of tea, it is also the inscription into the wall of objects related to the loss of volume or the passage of air (a pipe, a revolver ... ). Combining references to his own life (his grandfather’s pipes and cane, the rifles of which his father is an avid collector ... ), the history of art, the history of music… the exhibition offers us an oscillation between illusion and reality, memories and relics, an immersion into the curious world of Oliver Beer.

Isabelle Bertolotti

About the artist:

Oliver Beer was born in 1985 in Pembury (United Kingdom). A composer by training, he studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). He also followed the Film and Audiovisual Studies Masters at the University Paris-Sorbonne (France). He lives and works in London (United Kingdom) and Paris (France).

Photo courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Blaise Adilon