Mr Piano & Mrs Pile, 2004

Description:

The starting point for this piece was to explore the piano as a phenomenon. After creating the square, distinctly masculine upright piano, I felt the urge to give it a counterpart, something that would be its opposite. So I created a female character that was essentially meant to be messy, or literally “a pile”. The two different shapes gave birth to the juxtaposition in Mr Piano & Mrs Pile’s characters.

Mr Piano & Mrs Pile is one of many conversational pieces I have made. The two characters simply talk about themselves, the objects around them, and what these objects might mean. Through their conversations, they reveal their different moods, personalities, and psychological states. In between, they sing songs, as they put it themselves, "when they get tired of talking."

I remember thinking that the content of their conversation was never particularly important. What mattered was the fact that the sculptures were talking to each other. It was as if the artwork were having an inner conversation with itself.

The piece was partly inspired by works such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos and Samuel Beckett’s short play or dramaticule Come and Go. On one level, I saw it as a theatre piece in which the only performers were objects. On another, considering that my work essentially grows out of the tradition of painting, I was fascinated by the idea of the painting beginning to speak, not only metaphorically, but also quite literally.

In this version, Mr Piano & Mrs Pile is presented on a stage in front of an audience. Originally, and more typically, the work has been shown in galleries and museums, where visitors could move freely among the objects, standing or sitting wherever they liked, becoming part of the installation as well, and the circumstancial conversation simply by being there.

The work was conceived during my residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, 2003–2004..

Team & assistance: Monkey Costume by Juliane Solmsdorf. Drums by Helgi Svavar Helgason. Bass by Frank Frede. Music Recorded at Greenhouse Studios Reykjavik (Thanks to Valgeir Sigurðsson) and Klink & Bank Reykjavik.

Title: Mr Piano & Mrs Pile

Year: 2004

Materials: Cut out wooden panels, paint, computer animation, video, music, two synchronised video projectors (two channel video) and sound.

Dimensions: ca 10 × 10 meters

Duration: 25min and 35 sec

Exhibition history:

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, as part of Sculpture as Object Species, a solo exhibition spanning four locations: Kummelholmen, Andy’s Gallery, Stockholm Konst at Vårberg Centrum, and Moderna Museet. Curator at Moderna Museet: Katrin Lundquist. Initiator and caretaker: Torbjörn Johansson
Stockholm, 2022

Cueto Projects. As part of egillegillegill - solo show. Cur: Gyonata Bonvincini. New York. 2007

Egill Sæbjörnsson. Gallery 101. Reykjavik. 2005

Egill Sæbjörnsson. Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Berlin. 2004

Categories:

Video Installation

Animation

Music & Sound

Conversational piece