For this show, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo has given Thomas Bayrle carte blanche. Curator of his own exhibition, the German Artist has conceived a minimalist, though humorous setup, where an automated conductor orchestrates a landscape full of highways leading to nowhere…

Revolving around a newly-commissioned piece Conducteur, this show revisits and reorganizes well-known pieces from the distant to the more recent past.

While monitors play Sunbeam (1994) on the gallery floor and a newly-edited version of Gummibaum movie at ground level, visitors can see a third of the elements composing the gigantic Carmageddon which created an impact at the last dOCUMENTA(13)(Kassel, 2012). In front of this field of motorways, inherited from a time when daily traffic jams were the norm, visitors are confronted by the leftovers of a bygone era…

All over these items dapples a sound collage – composed of the “furniture music” by Erik Satie (1917), mixed with the original windshield-wiper sound of a car. This collage of minimal music will run all day long – only being interrupted, once in a while, by the screening of the Film Sunbeam.

For this amazing installation, mixing various media, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo wishes to express its gratitude to Thomas Bayrle and his studio, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Johann Widauer, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Japan and the Goethe-Institut for their kind and renewed support during the whole exhibition preparation.

Courtesy of Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo