Hanne Darboven, a visual artist known primarily for her rigourous, repetitive drawings which are drawings of non-representational writing, loops written out again and again in time, also created music, including Opus 17A, a work for double bass. This piece will then be recorded and played once a day throughout the duration of the exhibition.
This monumental piece consists of 1008 pages of uniform size divided into 4 Opus’s (Opus 17a and b and Opus 18a and b). Each Opus is comprised of 36 poems, and each poem is made of 6 pages plus a title page on which an antiquarian greeting card celebrating a Christian confirmation has been collaged. The poems reveal a rhythmic movement in their increasing and decreasing rows of numbers, and the checksum values are represented in digits and line-notations (17a, 18a) or by digits entered into a grid (17b, 18b). This work adopts musical methods of movement and repetitive rhythms and was conceived against the backdrop of musical compositions by the artist. First performed at the opening of Darboven's exhibition at Dia on Wednesday, May 1, 1996.
Hanne Darboven was born in 1941 in Munich, Germany. In 1965 she graduated from the Hochschule fnr Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, where she had studied painting. Between 1966 and 1968, Darboven lived in New York City where she created her first mature works, which placed her at the center of Conceptual art practice. Since 1967 she has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, including Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1995-96. In New York City she has shown with Leo Castelli Gallery since 1973. She lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.



Opus 17a for double bass perfomed by Robert Black
Produced by Jonathan Bepler
Recorded at Aardvark Studio,New York
70 minutes