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Alexander Tillegreen
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I
II
about
Vita
Contact



‚Phantom Streams (Zyklus I)‘

6-channel sound installation, 

curtains, lights, bench
10 min 20. sek
Installation at 'Inhabiting basis' 

Frankfurt am Main 2020



‚Untitled (diffusers)‘

wood, paint,
variable dimensions, 

Inhabiting basis 2020



'erwartung (feld)'
Photopolymer etching on paper 

54 cm x 38 cm

Inhabiting basis 2020



'5 movements (score)’
Silkscreen on carton
70 cm x 100 cm



’Wanderer’ 

Aquatint etching
50 cm x 35 cm 

Inhabiting basis 2020

Inhabiting basis catalogue text


Out of a dense field of voices, streams of words materialize, then disappear; fade away or become entwined, forming new structures. What is being heard is affected by the positioning and movement of the listener in the space. The voices flicker, alternating between concrete and abstract, male and female. It is a dynamic and continuously reactive process, a listening experience that resists being repeated. Instead, Alexander Tillegreen‘s sound installation Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) opens up an acoustic space that addresses the act of listening itself as an activity that is never fully conscious or controllable and can only be described subjectively and individually. By means of seriality, Tillegreen uses a specific technique of voice recording, editing and a spatial multi speaker setup, to evoke an immersive experience in which the real is destabilized with illusory elements in the listener‘s mind. In this way, language is experienced as something that is not simply there but that must be filtered and interpreted out of a mass of acoustic information. The work thus takes a phenomenon from music psychology as its starting point in order to address the question of how language is perceived. So-called “phantom words” may have the potential to create auditory illusions in the listener and expand the original meaning of a source word to the extent of hearing other words and even whole sentences that are not there. The material used for the sound composition and its artistic arrangement was developed through interdisciplinary research conducted in dialogue with scientists and sound technicians at the Max Planck Institute including an ongoing laboratory study on psychoacoustics. Tillegreen’s work plays with the fact that the act of listening does not merely involve the reception of acoustic signals but that the incoming information and the understanding and attribution of meaning to it largely depend on the listener’s individual experiences, expectations, language background and cultural and subjective situatedness. The idea of a mental archive determined by a dynamic state that is not fixed on a certain system of order informs both Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) and the sculptural work Untitled(diffusor). The seriality of this work’s minimalist objects reflects the rhythmic and repetitive characteristics of the sound piece, while its compartments evoke the image of an archive. Its cellular structure produces a subtle shadow-play, the complex tonalities which are dependent on the viewer’s movements through the room, thus echoing the variable listening experience of Phantom Streams (Zyklus I). Tillegreen’s graphic prints function similarly as visual reflections of different modes of and states related to sound and to listening. Together with his objects they constitute Tillegreen‘s ongoing investigation into the connections between the visual, the sculptural, and the auditory.



Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich) 2017

Museum für moderne Kunst Frankfurt

2-channel sound installation.

Audiofile (8 min loop) 

Silkscreen print

'Vierkantrohre Serie D' (1967) 

by Charlotte Posenenske 

borrowed from the MMK collection, 

reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Stimme', 2017

100 cm x 60 cm
Silkscreen on canvas



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 

Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich), 2017 combines two sound sources: White noise as used in private and public spaces to mask distracting and unwanted sounds and to provide privacy. The piece also contains voice samples of the inner monologues of the protagonist Eleanor Lance from the 1963 feature film The Haunting by Robert Wise. "As part of the installation a configuration of Charlotte Posenenske‘s Vierkantrohre Serie D (1967) isin included. Posenenske‘s work was often shown in contexts of working environments and public spaces in which white noise and sound masking was also used. The ‚Vierkantrrohre‘ functions like a modular system, analogues for the artist to a musical score, open to interpretation. Adapting to the spaces they are in, merging with the architecture they are becoming almost invisible while still maintaining a strong sculptural presence. In this way Posenenske‘s objects reminds of the impact sound and white noise has on acoustic environments. On a material level there seems to be a synaesthetic relationship between the sound and the objects both carrying metallic qualities in timbre and surface."



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



‚before character (score)‘

Etching on paper
75 cm x 45 cm (framed)

About Certain Soups, combines two modes of temporality, an immersive sound installation and a soup. The exhibition title is taken from the eponymous section in the book The Art of Cu- isine: a compilation of essays, illustrations, recipes and research done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s view, every artistic expression should be accompanied by some culinary festivity, itself announced by a drawing, a lithograph, and an elaborate menu. He was as well convinced that cookery is an art. Along with the serving of the soup a new sound piece is being shown in the alte- red exhibition space, which is shrouded in atmospheric light. Parallelogram (2018) is a piece that explores compositional seriality through sine waves, combined with segments of constructed Shepard tones. These were used in diverse ways in music history, ranging from the compositions of Baroque masters to recent electronic dance music. The tones in Parallelogram are consisting of a superposition of sine waves as well but separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately, in real, does not get no higher or lower.



'space in between', Agnes Maybach Köln, 2015
Solo exhibition curated by Jana Baumann. 
Along with the film works “Electronic Moon 2” (1966)
by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (
1925) by Walter Ruttmann.



'cabin fever (six chapters)‘ , 2015

4 channel sound installation

11 min 12 sec audio loop, 2015
transparent prints (variable dimensions)




Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (1925) 

by Walter Ruttmann



Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik 



'cabin fever (six chapters)' 2015 consists of an
audio sequence and a series of six transparent prints,
each representing chapters in an unfolding narrative form.
The sound sources include field and studio recordings,
synthesized modulations, computer voices,
text bits as well as singing human voices.
'Delve' is a stylistically tight and confrontational meeting between body and film. The young Danish artist Alexander Tillegreen's short film begins as a flashing double projection of a close-up of a red lamp, which develops into other images of abstract and figurative elements as the work progresses. Are we subjected to infrared light treatment, a heat lamp, a night club or the red lights of the red light district at night? The answer is not one, but all of them, as the film's visual side and the pace of the editing subtly creates a wealth of associations of different situations. In the interaction with the oscillating soundscapes of the soundtrack, 'Delve' develops into a multi-sensory film experience, which gives ones body an auditory and visual electric charge, and does so in such an intense and fascinating way, that the film's oscillations stay with you after the conclusion of this short but highly tangible work. If you happen to suffer from the very rare photosensitive epilepsy, you should refrain from exposing yourself to Tillegreen's dizzying cinematic sensorium. Screening as a part of the compilation 'Danish Artists Film/Video'. text by Curator Mads Mikkelsen



‚Phantom Streams (Zyklus I)‘

6-channel sound installation, 

curtains, lights, bench
10 min 20. sek
Installation at 'Inhabiting basis' 

Frankfurt am Main 2020



‚Untitled (diffusers)‘

wood, paint,
variable dimensions, 

Inhabiting basis 2020



'erwartung (feld)'
Photopolymer etching on paper 

54 cm x 38 cm

Inhabiting basis 2020



'5 movements (score)’
Silkscreen on carton
70 cm x 100 cm



’Wanderer’ 

Aquatint etching
50 cm x 35 cm 

Inhabiting basis 2020

Inhabiting basis catalogue text


Out of a dense field of voices, streams of words materialize, then disappear; fade away or become entwined, forming new structures. What is being heard is affected by the positioning and movement of the listener in the space. The voices flicker, alternating between concrete and abstract, male and female. It is a dynamic and continuously reactive process, a listening experience that resists being repeated. Instead, Alexander Tillegreen‘s sound installation Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) opens up an acoustic space that addresses the act of listening itself as an activity that is never fully conscious or controllable and can only be described subjectively and individually. By means of seriality, Tillegreen uses a specific technique of voice recording, editing and a spatial multi speaker setup, to evoke an immersive experience in which the real is destabilized with illusory elements in the listener‘s mind. In this way, language is experienced as something that is not simply there but that must be filtered and interpreted out of a mass of acoustic information. The work thus takes a phenomenon from music psychology as its starting point in order to address the question of how language is perceived. So-called “phantom words” may have the potential to create auditory illusions in the listener and expand the original meaning of a source word to the extent of hearing other words and even whole sentences that are not there. The material used for the sound composition and its artistic arrangement was developed through interdisciplinary research conducted in dialogue with scientists and sound technicians at the Max Planck Institute including an ongoing laboratory study on psychoacoustics. Tillegreen’s work plays with the fact that the act of listening does not merely involve the reception of acoustic signals but that the incoming information and the understanding and attribution of meaning to it largely depend on the listener’s individual experiences, expectations, language background and cultural and subjective situatedness. The idea of a mental archive determined by a dynamic state that is not fixed on a certain system of order informs both Phantom Streams (Zyklus I) and the sculptural work Untitled(diffusor). The seriality of this work’s minimalist objects reflects the rhythmic and repetitive characteristics of the sound piece, while its compartments evoke the image of an archive. Its cellular structure produces a subtle shadow-play, the complex tonalities which are dependent on the viewer’s movements through the room, thus echoing the variable listening experience of Phantom Streams (Zyklus I). Tillegreen’s graphic prints function similarly as visual reflections of different modes of and states related to sound and to listening. Together with his objects they constitute Tillegreen‘s ongoing investigation into the connections between the visual, the sculptural, and the auditory.



Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich) 2017

Museum für moderne Kunst Frankfurt

2-channel sound installation.

Audiofile (8 min loop) 

Silkscreen print

'Vierkantrohre Serie D' (1967) 

by Charlotte Posenenske 

borrowed from the MMK collection, 

reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 



'Stimme', 2017

100 cm x 60 cm
Silkscreen on canvas



'Vierkantrohre Serie D', 1967

Steel plates, screws

Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985)

Reconfigured and installed by the artist 

Figur (Diffusion, Synchronisierung, Ausgleich), 2017 combines two sound sources: White noise as used in private and public spaces to mask distracting and unwanted sounds and to provide privacy. The piece also contains voice samples of the inner monologues of the protagonist Eleanor Lance from the 1963 feature film The Haunting by Robert Wise. "As part of the installation a configuration of Charlotte Posenenske‘s Vierkantrohre Serie D (1967) isin included. Posenenske‘s work was often shown in contexts of working environments and public spaces in which white noise and sound masking was also used. The ‚Vierkantrrohre‘ functions like a modular system, analogues for the artist to a musical score, open to interpretation. Adapting to the spaces they are in, merging with the architecture they are becoming almost invisible while still maintaining a strong sculptural presence. In this way Posenenske‘s objects reminds of the impact sound and white noise has on acoustic environments. On a material level there seems to be a synaesthetic relationship between the sound and the objects both carrying metallic qualities in timbre and surface."



'assimilate' (2016) 

2016, 14 min 52 sec audio, speakers, electric light controller, curtains, bench
at Kunsthalle Darmstadt



‚before character (score)‘

Etching on paper
75 cm x 45 cm (framed)

About Certain Soups, combines two modes of temporality, an immersive sound installation and a soup. The exhibition title is taken from the eponymous section in the book The Art of Cu- isine: a compilation of essays, illustrations, recipes and research done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s view, every artistic expression should be accompanied by some culinary festivity, itself announced by a drawing, a lithograph, and an elaborate menu. He was as well convinced that cookery is an art. Along with the serving of the soup a new sound piece is being shown in the alte- red exhibition space, which is shrouded in atmospheric light. Parallelogram (2018) is a piece that explores compositional seriality through sine waves, combined with segments of constructed Shepard tones. These were used in diverse ways in music history, ranging from the compositions of Baroque masters to recent electronic dance music. The tones in Parallelogram are consisting of a superposition of sine waves as well but separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately, in real, does not get no higher or lower.



'space in between', Agnes Maybach Köln, 2015
Solo exhibition curated by Jana Baumann. 
Along with the film works “Electronic Moon 2” (1966)
by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (
1925) by Walter Ruttmann.



'cabin fever (six chapters)‘ , 2015

4 channel sound installation

11 min 12 sec audio loop, 2015
transparent prints (variable dimensions)




Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik and „Opus IV“ (1925) 

by Walter Ruttmann



Electronic Moon 2” (1966) 

by Nam June Paik 



'cabin fever (six chapters)' 2015 consists of an
audio sequence and a series of six transparent prints,
each representing chapters in an unfolding narrative form.
The sound sources include field and studio recordings,
synthesized modulations, computer voices,
text bits as well as singing human voices.
'Delve' is a stylistically tight and confrontational meeting between body and film. The young Danish artist Alexander Tillegreen's short film begins as a flashing double projection of a close-up of a red lamp, which develops into other images of abstract and figurative elements as the work progresses. Are we subjected to infrared light treatment, a heat lamp, a night club or the red lights of the red light district at night? The answer is not one, but all of them, as the film's visual side and the pace of the editing subtly creates a wealth of associations of different situations. In the interaction with the oscillating soundscapes of the soundtrack, 'Delve' develops into a multi-sensory film experience, which gives ones body an auditory and visual electric charge, and does so in such an intense and fascinating way, that the film's oscillations stay with you after the conclusion of this short but highly tangible work. If you happen to suffer from the very rare photosensitive epilepsy, you should refrain from exposing yourself to Tillegreen's dizzying cinematic sensorium. Screening as a part of the compilation 'Danish Artists Film/Video'. text by Curator Mads Mikkelsen