Galería Tomás March is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by the multidisciplinary artist José Antonio Orts (Meliana, Valencia, 1955).

In 2004 Orts was awarded one of the most prestigious international sound art prizes, the Deutsche Klangkunst Preis, for an installation conceived for the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl in Berlin.

“Generally speaking I want my works to be more than pure inert elements, in other words I try to make them “living”. That’s why I focus on sensitive pieces that capture the visitor’s energy. The core idea is that the best way of imbuing a work with “life” is to borrow or capture this life from the spectator who contemplates it or, in some cases, from its immediate surroundings.

The form of the pieces always come from their function, which means that there is a basic union between visual form and the effect produced. The arrangement of the elements of the installation in the space follows visual plus light and sound criteria; the first, predicated on the plasticity of the actual object and the architecture of the place; the second is based on musical composition and the interrelationship of the work with the spectator. The electronic materials are not only used for their (electronic) function because they are also part of the plastic material for the final piece.

My installations are conceived so that the visitor can explore them from within. When doing so, the spectator inhabits the work and becomes a crucial part of it, ultimately making it alive, humanising and completing it.”

After studying musical composition with Amando Blanquer (1974-85), Luciano Berio (1983), Iannis Xenakis (1985) and Yoshihisa Taïra (1986-88) J. A. Orts received grants to further his education in Paris and Rome, where he discovered the visual potential of a project interrelating music with the plastic arts, creating sculptures combining music and light through the use of electronic circuits. Following his first exhibition at the University of Valencia exhibition centre (1991), Orts went on to exhibit at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques Villa Arson (Nice), as well as the Maeght de St Paul Foundation in France (1995), the IVAM’s Centro del Carmen in Valencia (1997), and then in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Guadalajarra and Montevideo, at the Berliner Festival Neuer Musik in 2000 and 2002, in the Cervantes Institute in Brussels in 2002, Kryptonale 9, Grosser Wasserspeicher, and the DAAD Galerie in Berlin in 2003. In 2004 he exhibited at the Sa Nostra Cultural Centre in Ibiza, Formentera and Palma, as well as in Galería Tomás March. In 2006 he had a show at the Spanish Cultural Centre in Mexico (Mexico City). Since 2000 Orts has been living in Berlin, where he initially arrived as a guest artist at the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm.

J. A. Orts’ installations are widely viewed as unique in the art world. In them he uses interactive sculptures sensitive to changes in light and the movement of air around them, often provoked by visitors, thus producing variations in light and sound. Orts’ work is highly regarded not only in Germany but also in France and Holland and other countries around the world where his work is in the collection of several major museums (Centro Pompidou in Paris, Museo Marugame Hirai in Japan, etc.) as well as key Spanish collections like the ARCO Foundation and the IVAM (Valencia).

Orts is currently one of the most widely recognised international artists in the field of sound art and interactivity.