Massimo Bartolini: Sparse steps

1 Feb - 8 Mar 2025 Golden Square

Massimo Bartolini’s practice is defined by a diverse range of artistic languages and materials, from immersive installation, performance and audience engagement to drawing, sculpture and assemblage. The artist’s work consistently reconfigures the relationship between the exhibition space and the viewer, often acting as an invitation – to sit, to contemplate, to connect and to listen – while also offering unexpected aesthetic and sensory experiences.

Music has become a key preoccupation for Bartolini, manifested most ambitiously in the Italian Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia (2024). Due qui / To Hear presented four new works that together created an ‘inhabitable’ musical organ which centralised collaborative listening as a way to connect with others, the exhibition space and the world around us. In Sparse steps, the artist presents a single organ which runs the length of the gallery space, alongside a new series of wall-mounted ‘sound paintings.’

A new score has been written for the exhibition by composer and collaborator Gavin Bryars, in which all five ‘sound paintings’ are played together with two basses. The score was performed by Gavin and Yuri Bryars and members of the gallery team to mark the opening of the exhibition. You can watch part of this in the exhibition video below.
Pensive Bodhisattva on A Flat, 2024
First shown in the Italian pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, Pensive Bodhisattva on A Flat (2024) consists of a large organ pipe upon which sits a small statue of a Bodhisattva. In Buddhism, this figure represents a person who has reached the highest level of enlightenment but sacrifices their prize to help others do the same. It is an ‘embodiment of inactivity’ that prioritises thought over action. The organ pipe emits a single note of A Flat at 32 hertz, just within range of human hearing, filling the gallery with a meditative drone. The sound physically resonates through the viewer’s body, inducing a state of contemplation while slowing the passing of time.
B Flat, 2024
Accompanying the single note emitted by Pensive Bodhisattva on A Flat, five sound paintings occupy the walls. Upon first impression, the works are visually minimal, their perforated surfaces bringing to mind the work of Lucio Fontana (1899–1968). For Bartolini however there is an important difference: where the slashes in Fontana’s canvases reveal the wall of the gallery, these openings lead into the body of the work, which contains a hidden potential. When activated, each emits a different chord of music, together creating a chord progression that can be reconfigured.
G, 2024
This invisible element is important to Bartolini, who sees the show as consisting of two components: the visual, which is abstract, and the aural, which is a carnal, bodily experience. The latter brings an unpredictability to each work – the performer could play according to a musical score or improvise at will.
B, 2024
The artist describes the perforations across the surface not as holes, but ‘mouths’ through which air passes like a breath that forms a note. This idea of breath is important to Bartolini whose practice has often incorporated performance and audience participation. Here the breath of the audience fills the space, this becomes the breath of the musical instrument, emitted in a collection of notes.
'The painting is not just a surface or even an illusion. It is something that contains a presence, and this presence is the sound. Whether it plays or not.'
D, 2024
These pieces are as much paintings as musical instruments. Their palettes reflect the colours that musician Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin assigned to notes in the late 19th century, being one of the first composers to introduce orchestral scores allocated to ‘luce’ (light). For Bartolini, this coming together of paintings and musical instruments is an important unification, enabling what is typically only a visual experience to enter the field of sound.
E Flat, 2024
The title of the exhibition references the studio album Giant Steps by John Coltrane the first five chords of which are reflected in the five chords of the sound paintings – B, D, G, B Flat and E Flat. Widely considered one of the most influential jazz albums of all time, Coltrane’s chord progressions marked a pivot point in jazz culture and improvision. For his exhibition at Golden Square, Massimo Bartolini seeks to create his own space of both musical and aesthetic improvisation.
'I discovered the book of Julian Barnes recently who said: "You put together two things that have not been together before. And the world is changed". And this is exactly what I have tried to do.'
A special evening with Massimo Bartolini and Gavin Bryars
To celebrate the opening of the Sparse steps, Massimo Bartolini was in conversation with the composer Gavin Bryars, followed by two musical performances by Gavin Bryars and Yuri Bryars.

Watch a recording
Massimo Bartolini and Edoardo Marraffa: AIRTRANE
To mark the closing of the Massimo Bartolini’s exhibition Sparse steps, renowned saxophonist Edoardo Marraffa performed a new piece inspired, accompanied by an introduction to the exhibition by the artist.

Listen to a recording
Massimo Bartolini at Biennale Arte 2024
From April–November 2024, Massimo Bartolini presented the major project Due qui / To Hear, curated by Luca Cerizza, at the Italian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Learn more
Download Press Release

Photography: Ben Westoby

Videography: Jon Lowe

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Massimo Bartolini: Sparse steps

Photography: Ben Westoby

Videography: Jon Lowe

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