Friday, June 12, 7-10 pm – A special sound performance featuring Damian Catera’s improvisational algorithmic based “DeCompositions”

The Hogar Collection is pleased to announce, The End of History, the much-anticipated solo exhibition of sound, video and works on paper by Damian Catera. The core of his newest body of work delves into a complexly deconstructive manipulation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ; expressed both sonically and in the form of digital prints of the manipulated score. Known for his masterful use of the MAX/MSP programming environment for sound, Catera writes and creates an elaborate labyrinth of randomized parameters, which he uses to feed his original source material into, unleashing a fine tuned, probability based soundscape, which allows for the “liberation” of music that has been trapped inside a class defined system of cultural production for several centuries. Inspired by the Marxist/Hegelian idea of the end of history, where the result is a free Utopic society, Catera’s 5.1-surround sound work places the listener into an immersive, multi textural environment of invigorated, repurposed sound.

Alongside the sound work Catera’s newest investigations with digital prints on paper represent a mystifying and dizzying array of the original scores as they morph into their new incarnations. To be seen as one possibility of an abstract representation or an analogy of the sonic pieces, the prints reflect and amplify the synesthetic quality of the transformative process.

To further expand upon his ongoing interest in the synesthetic phenomenon, Catera will also present, The Memory Project, a series of video works that borrow from a current system of cultural production; the internet. Culled from amateur bootleg concert footage of rock spectacles downloaded from YouTube, Catera removes the soundtrack of the original footage and morphs the images into beautifully abstract, unrecognizable and visually melodic torrents, which function as an examination into the process of memory as an inexact discontinuity.

Damian Catera is an interdisciplinary sound and media artist, electroacoustic composer and improviser. Catera’s work reflects interests in critical analysis, experimental composition/ improvisation and transmission. His primary mission as an artist is to blur disciplinary boundaries often utilizing appropriated material and algorithmic processing. In recent years, his work has been exhibited and performed Internationally at venues including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen in New York City, the ZKM institute in Germany, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Prague, the National Gallery in Prague, The Walker Center, The Adler Planetarium, The Chelsea Museum, Art in General, ICMC ’96 in Hong Kong and MediaForum 2003 in Moscow among others. He received an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BA in Political Science from Siena College. He also studied Electroacoustic Composition at Les Atelier UPIC, the Paris-based institute founded by composer Iannis Xenakis. Damian is the recent recipient of a 2008 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.