For the third episode of CrossRoads, visual artist Iva Gueorguieva and her husband, sound artist Matthew Mcgarvey present the installation 'Echolalia'. The exhibition in outLINE includes large scale double-sided drawings, small paintings, a video projection and a sound installation.

The work was inspired by significant events in the artists’ personal lives: the birth of their son Neven and the death of their dog Djana shortly thereafter. In discussing the work Gueorguieva points out that: “It was about birth and death, about memory and the way that longing for someone or something you love can produce images. Past, present and future.”

In her drawings Gueorguieva presents a joining of opposites, like abstraction and figuration, in unexpected new combinations. She creates the impression of three dimensional space through the usage of multiple overlapping images and personal and calligraphic markings. Mcgarvey’s sound composition is based on actual field recordings from their house and garden combined with older and also purely instrumental material.

The concept of the title ‘Echolalia’ is mainly used in psychology and psychiatry to describe the condition in which a speaker shows a tendency to repeat someone else’s last word or phrase. The artists chose this title because of the implied mixture between past and future, compulsion and choice, meaning and non-meaning.

In their joint projects Gueorguieva and Mcgarvey research the interaction and interference between audio, visual, and tactile material, exploring the specific time expanding capacity of sound and creating an environment in which intense and significant visual and sonic experiences are interwoven. On a formal level their techniques are similar. They both work with collage, utilizing a layering process in which existent structures are destabilized and recalibrated by constant reworkings.

In their own independent practices they have developed distinctive languages and bodies of work, rooted in a deep knowledge and understanding of art and music historical issues. Gueorguieva finds herself drawn to the Northern European Baroque period and Rubens specifically. She is also influenced by cross-over artists like Martin Kippenberger and Gordon Matta-Clark.

Mcgarvey is interested in the Situationist strategy of ‘détournement’ or derailment, a practice dating back to Dada, Surrealism, and William Burroughs. Musically his interest lies in emotionally charged, poetically intense popular music. Recently though, he has focused on 60’s minimalism, especially LaMonte Young and later Eliane Radigue’s repetitive music, and on experiments that question the relation between hearing, vision and space, as in the work of Alvin Lucier.

Iva Gueorguieva [Bulgaria, 1974] lives and works in the U.S. She is represented by Angles Gallery in Los Angeles and has participated in a number of exhibitions in Europe and the U.S.A. In 2006 she received the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Grant. Recently she has exhibited at Stephan Stux Gallery in New York, Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles, the Pomona Museum in Claremont, Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Samson Projects in Boston, 2x2 Projects in Amsterdam, and the Heriard-Cimini Gallery in New Orleans.

Matthew Mcgarvey [U.S.A. 1974] is currently completing a PhD in the music department at the University of California San Diego. His work investigates how altering productive practice and physical space contributes to alterations in modes of perception and affect. His sound-art practice focuses heavily on everyday environmental sound. His ambition is to arrive at a point where practical, 'artistic' work and theoretical 'intellectual' work intersect in a single practice.