An exhibition conceived as a constantly changing composition
What the Work Is
Rolywholyover is an exhibition work conceived by the American composer and artist John Cage. It was presented under the title Rolywholyover a Circus at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles in 1993 and at The Menil Collection in Houston in 1994. The work belongs to Cage’s late-period practice of applying chance operations and indeterminacy beyond music, treating an exhibition itself as a composition whose contents and arrangement are not fixed in advance.
What the Book Is About
The available sources identify Rolywholyover as an exhibition rather than describing it as a book, and they do not document a publication of that title. What can be said with certainty is that it is an exhibition project by Cage, mounted at two American museums in the early 1990s, and that it is grouped with the media art of the team Lohner Carlson, whose work appeared in the exhibition. The sources do not describe the exhibition’s internal contents, its selection of objects, or any catalogue associated with it, so those matters are not addressed here.
Significance and Influence
The sources record Rolywholyover a Circus as part of the exhibition history of Lohner Carlson, the collaboration between Henning Lohner and Van Carlson. Their inclusion places the project within a broader network of late-twentieth-century media and installation art shown at major institutions. Beyond its two documented presentations, the sources provide no information about the work’s reception, critical response, or later influence.
The source material records that Lohner and Carlson’s creative collaboration began in 1989. Since Carlson’s death in 2011, Lohner has continued the act. They are known for their series Active Images, which bridges a gap between photography and narrative film, as well as for blurring the line between image and video.
Collaborations with John Cage
Lohner’s collaboration with Emmy-Award-winning cinematographer and photographer Van Carlson started in 1989, with the biographical art film Peefeeyatko, an intimate music portrait of American composer Frank Zappa. It was the first time that Zappa had allowed a film crew to study him during compositional work, actually filming the first moments of a new compositional process. The film is described as featuring “a very unique look at Frank Zappa and his work.”
Their encounter and subsequent work with composer John Cage was highly influential for Lohner and Carlson’s lifelong artistic partnership. This work includes the monochrome art film One11 and 103 in 1992, directed by Lohner and photographed by Carlson. One11 is the only feature-length film production Cage was ever involved in. It has no plot and consists of black-and-white images depicting a composed and chance-determined play of electric light, accompanied by Cage’s orchestra piece 103. Described as an “abstract study in light and shade,” it was completed in 1992 shortly before Cage’s death.
One11 received positive reviews from film and music critics, with Palm D’Or-winning filmmaker Louis Malle calling it “very strong, very daring, and finally completely mesmerizing.” Gramophone magazine stated that the production was “a splendid project carried out with dedication by all concerned” and noted the “remarkable quality of these uniquely pure visual images, studies in light ranging from total black to total white,” while The Wire commented, “what an extraordinary valedictory throw of the dice.” The film originally aired on German television and has been presented at various theatrical venues and exhibitions since its premiere in September 1992.
After Cage died in August 1992, Lohner and Carlson paid homage to the musician with the meticulously “composed film” The Revenge of the Dead Indians, featuring artists such as Dennis Hopper, Matt Groening and Yoko Ono. The production is a tribute to Cage, his thoughts, music, and influence, and has been described as “an unexpected and fascinating combination of intellectual thought, viewpoints and opinions.”
Active Images
In 1995, Lohner and Carlson’s audio-visual composition Raw Material, Vol. 1–11 was shown for the first time. This installation was exhibited throughout Europe, particularly in The Hague, Rome and Berlin. Composed from their archive of hundreds of hours of footage, the installation showed interviews as well as landscapes on eleven monitors, with an equal emphasis on speech, pictures and sounds.
Lohner and Carlson’s Active Images developed and was first shown at the Galerie Springer Berlin in 2006, titled Raw Material – Portraits and Landscapes. According to Lohner, the idea “arose from our love of video photography and from our subsequent despair over the loss of these images when turning them into For example, in ‘Mineo Rooftops’ (2010), the Sicilian scene, Lohner Carlson’s steady gaze achieves the narrative sense of place with utmost ease that a still image might have glossed over in its single shot or that a film might have presented to forcibly through dialogue or created storyline. […] ‘Istanbul Bridge’ (2012), on the other hand, effuses an ever more globalizing world, and the geopolitical contingencies presented by the Eurozone. However, there is a sense that none of these connotative readings of the works is all that important for Lohner or was for Carlson. Much more important is the taking of a moment to stop, look, and examine outside of a time so otherwise bound by a schizophrenic culture of images.”
Exhibitions
Solo shows
2021: Art Break – Henning Lohner: Gerhard Richter im Atelier, Stiftung Brandenburger Tor – Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin 2018: Galerie Hus, Paris 2017: Felix Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf 2017: Ars Electronica Center, Linz 2017: Ikono.tv, worldwide 2015: Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach 2014: RSA Antiquitäten, Wiesbaden 2013: Egeskov Fine Arts, Copenhagen 2013: RSA Antiquitäten, Wiesbaden 2013: INM – Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt am Main 2013: Galerie Springer, Berlin 2012: Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York 2012: Galerie Brachfeld, Paris (2x) 2012: SEZ – Sport- und Erholungszentrum, Berlin 2012: Galerie Hus, Paris 2011: Galerie Son, Berlin 2009: Bilirubin Gallery, Berlin 2008: Galerie Springer & Winckler, Berlin 2007: Galleria Traghetto, Rome 2006: Galerie Springer & Winckler, Berlin 1997: Goethe Institute Rome (Festival Internationale della Installazione Sonora), Rome 1996: Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern 1996: 12th International Video & Film Festival, Kassel 1996: World Wide Videofest, Gemeente Museum, The Hague 1995: Lichthaus, Bremen 1995: Hessisches Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden 1995: Foro Artistico in der Eisfabrik, Hannover
Group shows
2022: Rapture of the Deep. Film Under Water DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main 2022: 10 Jahre Galerie Springer Jubiläumsausstellung, Berlin 2018: Holocaust Memorial Day, Ikono.tv, worldwide 2017: Art & Technology, BOZAR Musée de l’art contemporain, Brussels 2016: Musicircus, Centre Pompidou, Metz 2015: Alles hat seine Zeit, WimmerPlus, Prien am Chiemsee 2014: The Vertigo of Reality, Academy of Arts, Berlin 2014: Neither, Seventeen, London 2014: Serpentine Cinema, Serpentine Gallery, London 2014: Hannah Rickards Exhibit, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford 2013: A Grammar of Subversion, Barbican Centre, London 2012: The Freedom of Sound – John Cage Behind The Iron Curtain, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest 2012: Raum – Räume, Galerie Springer, Berlin 2012: Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin 2012: John Cage and …, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg 2012: John Cage and …, Academy of Arts, Berlin 2012: A House full of Music, Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 2012: Sounds like Silence, Hartware Medienkunstverein, Dortmund 2012: Warsaw Autumn, Exhibition Space of the Austrian Embassy, Warsaw 2011: INM 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Ministry of Economics, Wiesbaden 2011: Tendencies in Contemporary Art, Wirtschaftsforum, Berlin 2011: Group Show Heisig – Oh – Lohner Carlson, Galerie Son, Berlin 2010: Realismus, Kunsthal, Rotterdam 2010: Realismus, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich 2010: Realismus, Kunsthalle Emden, Emden 2008: Performance Art, SFMOMA, San Francisco 2007: Tendencies in Contemporary Art, Galleria Traghetto, Venedig 1996: National Art Gallery of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 1996: Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon 1995: Artist in Residence, INM – Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt am Main 1995: Videofest, Podewil, Berlin 1994: Rolywholyover a Circus, The Menil Collection, Houston 1994: Artists of the INM, Galerie der Stadt, Sindelfingen 1993: Rolywholyover a Circus, MOCA, Los Angeles 1993: European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück 1993: Secondo Colloquio internationale di Musica Contemporanea, Palermo 1992: 30 Years Fluxus, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 1991: Classique en Images, La Scala, Milan 1991: Classique en Images, Louvre, Paris
