»HUO Drawings«. In spring of 2003 Charles Gute had the privilege of proofreading Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Interviews: Volume 1. With an awareness of the author’s art world stature, paired with a name that seems to have a greater-than-average vulnerability to typographic inconsistency, these drawings were created as a kind of cathartic antidote.
»Dutch Tape Funeral March (Marcia Funebre from Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”)«. The work consists of 13 rolls of duct tape initially placed at the top of the 16-foot-high gallery wall. On the day of the opening the rolls of tape were released so that they could “roll” down the wall under their own weight, a process that took over 8 hours to complete. As the tape reached mid-wall, viewers were able to see that there was a continuous strip of sheet music attached to the adhesive side of each roll. This sheet music was an actual transcription of the second movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, also known as the “Funeral March,” the linear length of which had been scaled to fit the 16-foot span from ceiling to floor. One of each of the 13 orchestral parts from the original score had been applied to each of the 13 rolls of tape, effecting a kind of super-slow automated performance of Beethoven’s somber work.
»Ant Climb Study #2« (video still) is a perceptual study of duration and movement. Here a live ant climbs the adhesive side of a length of masking tape. Appearing as an abstract mark, the ant’s progress is steady yet nearly imperceptable, akin to the movement of a minute hand on a clock. All projects by Charles Gute.
