Adrien Missika

Rhône Bumblebee / Rhône Drone, 2023

Installation

Rhone pebbles, ink, hemp jute

On Rhône pebbles of all sizes, Adrien Missika has inscribed Zs, also of all sizes. The polished stones are laid out randomly on a carpet where the lines of a 7-meter-long span run. Is it a musical tune? It certainly is. Contrary to museum rules, visitors of all ages are free to take the pebbles in their hands and arrange them differently, according to a known tune, or one composed on the spur of the moment, skilfully or randomly. Although this is a sound biennial, Adrien Missika also wanted to integrate touch into his work.

Why a Z? In reference to the bumblebee, that precious pollinator that accompanies its flight with a continuous thud. Adrien Missika has been interested in bees for several years now. His work includes Palazzo del Api (2018), an upside-down Aztec pyramid sculpture set in a Ligurian farmland, with some 2,300 holes of varying diameters to shelter insects, and Ein Horn (2023), a giant rhinoceros horn, also upside-down, with the same insect hotel function, set in the Berlin Zoo. The drone is also the continuous note or chord that underpins certain types of music, such as hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes, and is especially fundamental in Indian music, especially ragas. Contemporary composers such as La Monte Young have taken an interest in it.

In 2022, Marble oracle, pebble gamble..., a first version of this work, in a more modest format, was made with pebbles from the Aegean Sea and called for murmuring, chanting, with M's and H's.

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Dome, 2011

Super 8 film with sound transferred to Blu-ray, 09'07''

Dome was produced by Association Attitudes for The Beirut Experience exhibition in 2011. Adrien Missika filmed with Super-8 grain an incredible building designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer for the Tripoli International Fair in northern Lebanon. In 1975, the civil war brought everything to a halt, and the dome was left with sprays of rebar erupting from its entrails. In a play of shadows and sound reverberations, Adrien Missika invests it like an oversized musical instrument, through the intermediary of a character who is part musician, part acrobat.

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Adrien Missika

Born in 1981 in Paris
Lives and works in Berlin

Adrien Missika studied photography and visual arts at ECAL. During his studies in Lausanne, he co-founded the 1M3 gallery (2006-2014).

His works are impregnated with different historical and epistemological layers, both in their subject matter and in the way they are produced. Adrien Missika may use Super 8, slow photographic processes, mix recycled objects with new material... His work is nourished by research and discussions with scientists, but is also influenced by the reality and experience of a place.

He mixes the natural and the cultural, often with a slight poetic and humorous twist, committed but never cynical. He is as interested in bees as in the construction of landscapes, in environmental issues as in geography.