Dani Gal’s epic work, Historical Records (2005-ongoing) comprises over 700 commercially issued vinyl LPs, which the artist has collected since the beginning of this century. As the collection grew over the years, it was divided into three parts and The Polygon Gallery is showing Part 1, 2005-2018 (comprised of 246 records), from the Collection of Migros Museum in Zürich, in its ground floor gallery. This poignantly plural work becomes the centrepiece of Dani Gal’s first solo exhibition in Canada.
Installed in a dense grid on a wall, the array of LP covers can be understood visually as an alternative ‘history painting’; albeit one that refuses to serve a dominant narrative. Bracketed in time by the invention of the phonograph (1877) and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), Gal’s rich collection of sound recordings, chronicles “speeches and interviews of those who were in power, others who objected to this power, of war and peace agreements, human rights struggles, and other radio broadcasts of the events that shaped history.” Focusing on Gal’s engagement with sound as subject and material, the exhibition includes a listening station with access to his recent works for radio, the full sonic archive of Historical Records, as well as the artist’s eponymous book (published with Snoeck in 2018), a sumptuous compilation of his in-depth research into an almost disappeared phenomenon of sound documents – also available at The Diane Evans Bookstore.
During the course of the exhibition, public programs will activate the immense potential of the work as a ground for critical historical reflection and collective imagining of political and sonic futures: dialogues, tours, and radio broadcasts as well as a sound performance. For the opening on Saturday March 9, Gal himself performs Semi-Automatic: The Swamp in June, using his evolving system for putting different sound sources – such as live radio, field recordings (including samples from the Historical Records collection) and acoustic instruments outfitted with specially made motors – in dialogue. Nodding to the vanguard tradition of musique concrête, Gal turns speech into music and vice-versa, inviting listeners to consider anew the full substance of the histories that shape us.
More about the Artist
Born in Jerusalem and based in Berlin, Dani Gal studied at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem; the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt; and at Cooper Union in New York. His approach to art and filmmaking is distinguished by in-depth research, formal resolve and technical savvy, lending insight into the workings of political ideology and the interconnection of parallel, at times competing, histories. He has exhibited widely, including at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), The Istanbul Biennale (2011), New Museum, New York (2012), Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2013), The Jewish Museum New York (2014), Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014), Kunsthaus Zürich (2015) Kunsthalle Wien (2015), documenta 14 (2017), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2018 and 2023), steiricher herbst ’23 in Graz. Advancing innovative research to create his films and works for the gallery, in 2019, Gal was artist-in-residence with Blood Mountain Projects and research fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute; and in 2024, his is a fellow inHerit in the Centre for Advanced Studies-Heritage in Transformation, Humboldt University, Berlin. Concurrently to his solo exhibition at The Polygon, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia features Gal’s work Failed to Bind (2013) in the group exhibition Aporia (Notes to a Medium), on view through April 14, 2024.
