Andrius Arutiunian: Under the Cold Sun at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, May 9, 2025


Andrius Arutiunian: Under the Cold Sun at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg
Andrius Arutiunian, Under the Cold Sun, in der Klosterkirche, 2024/25. Photo: Stefan Stark.



MAGDEBURG.- Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer Andrius Arutiunian presents a new version of his installation Under the Cold Sun (2024/25) in the historic convent church, today part of the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg. The work explores the hidden forces that shape our perception of reality, narrative, and cosmology—blending fictitious constructs, psychoacoustic phenomena, and temporal distortions. Under the Cold Sun engages with the paradox of perception and truth, reflecting how fiction underpins and permeates our social imaginaries.

The work consists of three major elements—a mirror, a searchlight and digitally rendered organ sounds—three socio-politically charged aesthetic devices, each intricately entangled with sensory perception and the shifting grounds of both individual and collective self-assurance. Together, they form a ghostly triad that permeates and vibrates the entire centuries-old church architecture. A vast amount of light is beamed onto the dark surface of the mirror—an intensity that paradoxically renders self-recognition impossible. The surface, both absorbing and reflecting the light, becomes a site of disorientation rather than clarity. Through its cyclical waxing and waning, the light takes on the presence of a strange, cold celestial body—at once distant and intimate, artificial and cosmic—enacting a choreography that unsettles the order of the senses and mirrors the speculative quality of the piece itself.

In Under the Cold Sun the audience finds itself transposed into an alien symbolic order, one whose meaning remains obscure. The familiar sense of self-assurance that collective rituals once offered begins to falter, gradually undone by the radical otherness and dense, dark opacity of the arrangement. The psychoacoustic effects of the organ sounds, pitched with a non-Western tuning system, destabilise the cochlear and ocular senses and create a new speculative reality. The certainty of one’s own perception is also thrown into disarray, as both temporal experience—physical and historical—is distorted and unsettled.

The organ, which has a complex history of appearance and disappearance in the former convent church, manifests itself once again as a ghostly presence. Once a symbol of collective embodiment, its sounds slip between times, meanings, and states of being. Especially in a place where various ideas of community have long been celebrated through organ music, these synthetic and disembodied sounds no longer affirm the splendour or permanence of spiritual or secular authority. Instead, they reveal it as something far more complex, porous, and ultimately unresolved.

Under the Cold Sun reveals itself as a contemplation on the unconscious of the political, where different times, cultures, and belief systems converge and collide. By foregrounding the affective and irrational undercurrents of community, often dismissed or deemed obsolete, Arutiunian gestures toward the iridescent, abyssal foundation of all forms of identification and social coherence.

Curator of the exhibition: Benedikt Johannes Seerieder.










Today's News

May 9, 2025

Jill Newhouse Gallery presents Views from the Street: Views of Paris in 1904-5 by Enrique Atalaya

Rare penny arcade machines and top-quality antique advertising bolstered Morphy's $3.5M auction in Las Vegas

Miller & Miller announces 5 auctions on 5 consecutive days, May 21st-25th

Alicja Kwade's "Telos Tales" opens at Pace Gallery, unveiling monumental new works

Glyptotek opens "Gauguin & Kihara - First Impressions," pairing master's work with contemporary critique

Gothic resilience: Thomas van Houtryve's 14-year vision of Paris's icon

Max Ernst's surrealist vision expands at Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

Städel Museum presents first retrospective of feminist art pioneer Annegret Soltau

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation gifts Nelson-Atkins exhibition about Loose Park Project

Four artists explore interwoven meanings in "Interlayered" exhibition at DC Moore Gallery

David Nolan Gallery celebrates Ian Hamilton Finlay centennial with "Fragments" exhibition

Beverly Fishman unveils bold new paintings at Miles McEnery Gallery

Gagosian exhibits new and recent paintings by Takashi Murakami in New York

Christie's presents the Jewelry Collection of Anne H. Bass

KÖNIG GALERIE presents "ASBEST," diving into the overlooked stories of labor migration

The Phair returns to Turin for 6th edition, showcasing photography and launching new talks program

Cooper Hewitt acquires collection of work by Tobias Wong

Anthea Hamilton's first institutional show in Rome opens at Fondazione Memmo

New site-specific work by the artist Gülbin Ünlü for the Staff Entrance of Haus der Kunst

Andrius Arutiunian: Under the Cold Sun at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg

Sultanate of Oman opens its first-ever pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
(52 8110667640)

Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful