24th May 2007
CV
Ombretta Agrò Andruff has lived in New York City since 1998 where she works as an independent curator and art critic. Born in Turin, Italy, in 1971 she graduated from the University of Art and Literature in Siena, Italy, in 1995 and started her career as a curator of a not-for-profit space, VELAN, dedicated to showcase the work of emerging Italian and international artists.
Since then she has curated solo and group shows in Europe and the US collaborating with museums, art festivals, commercial galleries and art fairs such as Artists Space, GAle GAtes et al., Queens Museum of Art, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Armory Show, The i Art Basel Miam Fair, The Downtown Arts Festival, The d.u.m.b.o. art under the Bridge Festival and the Esso Gallery. In Europe she worked with the Maze Gallery in Turin, the Maria Cilena Gallery in Milan, Italy, and PLAY Gallery in Berlin. Since 2002 she has been doing research within the sound-art field and curated sound-based shows for the dumbo art festival in 2005, Brooklyn Vibes, and for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, Echoes from the Mountains – Suoni in Alta Quota.
She is a New York contributor for Italian art magazines Arte Critica, Tema Celeste, and Label as well as collaborating with the New York-based, The Art Tribune and New York Arts Magazine. She has written essays for several books and catalogues.
In July 2001 she was invited by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to hold a conference about her curatorial activity. Since then she has lectured at Engine 27, School of Visual Arts, the Pratt Institute, the New York University, the United Nations, and the Kingston University in London.
Abstract
Echoes from the Mountains - Suoni in Alta Quota
Sound surrounds us all the time. John Cage pointed out that there is no such thing as silence; even in a sound-proof room, we still hear the rush of blood cells coursing through the capillaries in our ears. From practically the time we are conceived until the time we die, we live bathed in non-stop sound.
Echoes >From the Mountains – Suoni in Alta Quota, a sound project of the official Cultural Olympiad program, is about tuning into this force of nature and of art creating “sound environments” which will stimulate the public to pay more attention to the world of sounds, may these be natural or the elaboration of an artist or a composer.
In comparison to a conventional work of music, sound art is made in order to signal a new listening experience, one that is often more active or interactive, and one that implies a multidisciplinary approach. Works of sound artists play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a world dominated by the visual. Sound art sculpts sound in space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them, and frames ambient "found" sound, altering our concepts of space, time, music, and noise.