Yann Novak

Artist’s Statement

In my work, I explore notions of perception, context, and movement through the construction of immersive spaces that seek to heighten the audience’s awareness of the present moment. Rooted in the “objectless” nature of intangible materials – sound and light – my work often takes on an intermediate character, offering enough information to transform space while preserving and enhancing the audience’s sense of their own embodied experience. This quality is intended to resist the tendency of dominant culture to monopolize our attention and pull us away from our own experience. Through this monopolization we become disenfranchised from our own experience, and thus the reclaiming of awareness becomes a political act.

My work draws on a wide range of sources, including raw and altered field recordings, analog and digital sound synthesis, manipulated artificial and natural light, and projection, to produce slowly evolving and interrelated sonic and visual fields. The distinct historical lineages of ambient electronic music and Light and Space are thus conjoined in service of a critical engagement with modernism, wherein its culturally unipolar and utopian tendencies are rejected in favor of its emphasis on the necessarily contingent and specular nature of works of art. Through careful consideration, my works not only address sight and hearing, but simultaneously expose the methodologies of looking and listening themselves. Taking the form of audiovisual installations, performances, architectural interventions, sound diffusions, recording, and prints, my work allows audiences to reclaim the present moment and explore the politics of awareness.

Website: yannnovak.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2011-2017

2017
Repose, Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA

2015
Sky-lit: Volume, Light, and Sound, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA

2014
Doppler.Shift, Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, CA

2011
3 Surfaces, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

Select Group Exhibitions from 2011-2017

2017
The Future Eve, Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

2016
Share Festival XI° Edition, Casa Jasmina, Torino, Italy

2015
Escuchas: Una selección de arte sonoro actual, Modern Art Museum of Medellín, Medellín, Colombia

2011
The More Things Change, SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA

Select Fellowships and Awards

2010
ARC Grant, The Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

2008
Grant for Artist Projects, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA

Select Community-based Artwork

2017
Repose Closing, Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA

2014
What is the color of home?, Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Spring Green, WI

2010
Drift/Net, 323 Projects, Los Angeles, CA

2005-present
Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Seattle, WA – Los Angeles, CA