EXHIBITIONS

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard

The Big Silent

13.06 – 31.07.2026

Inside tissue of a disassembled grand piano put into jars thereby rendering its ab/(para)normalities.

An act of softening what has become sedimented.

Point of departure.

The grand piano is an instrument heavily imbedded within Western institutions of music and has historically been considered a cultural marker of “an educated home.” 

The grand piano is equally embedded within a tradition of renegotiating the instrument in various ways: ways that lead into different musical spheres as well as spheres of both performance and visual art. These range from Charles Ives’ quartertone piano duets and John Cages’ prepared piano and piano walks (with Yoko Ono) to the (Fluxus) tradition of destroying or altering pianos by artists such as Yam Jun Paik, Phill Corner, and Annea Lockwood.

In a more modern context, we find Rebecca Horn and Andrea Büttner entering into dialogues with both the instrument and the history of how the grand piano has been renegotiated before.

The Big Silent is the result of Disassembling together a grand piano and was released as a book in 2026 titled

The Big Silent - 88 Piano Parasites + Appendix of Softer Tissue (released by forlaget Aftryk).