#ursula block

In 1981 gelbe MUSIK opened its doors at Schaperstr. 11 in Wilmersdorf, West-Berlin, with a show dedicated to graphic scores by contemporary avant-garde artists from Europe and the United States. Until 2014 Ursula Block programed gelbe MUSIK as a record store and gallery. It now lives on as the Broken Music Archive.

Ursula Block has hosted more than ninety shows featuring artists and composers such as Maryanne Amacher, John Cage, Henning Christiansen, Milan Knížák, Christina Kubisch, Nam June Paik, and Akio Suzuki. Throughout the 1980s she co-curated several influential exhibitions dedicated to artist’s records, among them Broken Music, with Michael Glasmeier, and Extended Play, with Christian Marclay. This exhibition at OSMOS entitled, Ursula Block’s gelbe MUSIK – 33 Years in Review, focuses on objects, records, and scores that are significant to Block and played a major role in the development of gelbe MUSIK. Last year an edition of this exhibition was installed at Mathew Gallery in Berlin, which is located down the street from gelbe MUSIK.

For more than 30 years gelbe MUSIK existed as a unique place for the intersection of art and music -- a record store and gallery where musicians, composers, visual artists and choreographers from all over the world could gather. Ideas were exchanged and friendships nurtured. Emphasizing the way small and independent art projects can evolve to support an international community, this project comes out of local and international alliances. Creating a musical loop, the exhibition was initiated by Fiona McGovern from Berlin, where OSMOS was founded 20 years ago, in collaboration with our neighbor, Justin Luke from Audio Visual Arts located down the street from OSMOS. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a listening session with Ursula Block and a special film screening on experimental music at the Goethe-Institut New York.

This exhibition is part of a year-long series that reflects on the 20 years OSMOS has been in existence since its founding in Berlin in 1997. OSMOS Address in New York is a project space for art gatherings and exhibitions in the East Village storefront that was once a saloon frequented by Emma Goldman and other radicals. In the 19th Century, the space in back was the printing office for their German language newspaper; it is now the editorial office for OSMOS Magazine and OSMOS Books.