Oliver Beer

Oliver Beer (born 1985) is a British artist who lives and works between London and Paris. He makes sculptures, installations, videos, and immersive live performances.

Biography Oliver Beer studied musical composition at the Academy of Contemporary Music, London; visual art at the University of Oxford; and theory of cinema at the Sorbonne, Paris.

His background in both music and fine art led to an early interest in the relationship between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture. He has translated his research into performances in which spectators take part and he makes sculptures and videos that embody the plastic expression of this relationship and the way the human body experiences it. Within and alongside his work with sound, Oliver Beer creates diverse sculpture, installation and film projects.

Beer's work has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions, notably at Met Breuer, Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA PS1, New York; Centre Pompidou, Opéra Garnier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Palais de Tokyo and Château of Versailles, Paris; the macLyon, Lyon; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; WIELS, Brussels and the Sydney and Istanbul biennales. Beer was included in the British Art Show 9 and has also held residencies at the Palais de Tokyo, the Watermill Centre, Sydney Opera House and the Fondation Hermès.

Solo exhibitions

2025 Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France, Oliver Beer « Reanimation Paintings: A Thousand Voices », A two-stage project Chapter 1: Drawing and sound collection workshops (4 October 2024 – 12 January 2025) and Chapter 2: Immersive exhibition of the films produced by Oliver Beer (4 April – 13 July 2025) 2024 Almine Rech Tribeca, New York, USA, Resonance Paintings - Cat Orchestra, 14 March – 27 April 2024 2023 Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, Salzburg, Austria, Oliver Beer: Resonance Paintings - Blue Notes, 28 January – 18 March 2023 Almine Rech, Shanghai, China, Recompositions: Night Revels, 12 May – 24 June 2023 London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, London, UK, Albion Waves, 9 February – 15 July 2023 2022 Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, Seoul, South Korea, Oliver Beer: Resonance Paintings - Two Notes, 3 May – 11 June 2022 British Art Show 9, Hayward Gallery Touring, The Box, KARST, The Arts Institute's Levinsky Gallery, The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth, UK, Household Gods 2021 Opéra Garnier, Paris, France, Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me), 29 September – 2 October 2021 2020 Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, UK, Oliver Beer: Oma

2019

Met Breuer, New York, USA, Vessel Orchestra, 2 July – 11 August 2019

Galerie des Arts Visuels, Quebec City, Canada, Recomposition (Baloo Stripped Bare), 16 February – 21 April 2019 University of New South Wales Gallery, Sydney, Australia, Impossible Composition, 1–23 February 2019 Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France, Household Gods, 12 January – 16 February 2019

2018 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne Impossible Composition curated by Anaïs Lellouche, 24 March – 21 April 2018 George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY, USA Reanimation (Snow White), Video Presentation, 30 October 2018 – 1 January 2019 Ruya Foundation, Baghdad, Iraq Reanimation (Alice Falling), Video Presentation, 16 November – 8 December 2018

2017

THADDAEUS ROPAC GALLERY, Ely House, London, UK, New Performance and Sculpture, 28 April 2017 – 29 July 2017 IKON GALLERY, Birmingham, UK, Solo exhibition, 15 March – 14 June 2017

2016

POMPIDOU CENTRE, Paris, France, Polyphonies curated by Christine Macel 19 October 2016 – 23 January 2017 NUIT BLANCHE, Paris, 2016 Live Stream, Pont des Arts, Paris, France, 1 October 2016 VG PRIZE EXHIBITION, London, UK August–September 2016 FRAENKEL LAB, San Francisco, USA, Reanimation (Snow White), January 2016

2015 AOYAMA MEGURO, Tokyo, Life, Death and Tennis. Daiwa Art Prize 2015 solo exhibition November–December 2015 ASAKUSA HOUSE, Tokyo, Deconstructing Sound, Daiwa Art Prize 2015 solo exhibition November–December 2015 WATERMILL CENTER, New York, Making Tristan, Watermill Center artist in residence September 2015 KILIC ALI PASA HAMAM, Istanbul, Call to Sound, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac / Istanbul Biennale September 2015 DAIWA ART PRIZE 2015, London, Daiwa Foundation Art Prize Exhibition, 12 June – 17 July 2015

2014 Diabolus in Musica, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France (Septembre 2014) Rabbit Hole, Oliver Beer, MAC Lyon, Lyon, France (6 Juin – 17 Août 2014) Prospectif Cinéma – Oliver Beer, Pompidou Centre, Paris, France (22 May 2014) Sunday Sessions, MoMA PS1, New York, USA (6 April 2014)

2013 Composition for Hearing an Architectural space, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France Oliver Beer, Villa Arson, Nice, France Outside-In, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (permanent installation), UK Out of Shot, Silencio, Paris, France

2012 Klang, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

2011 Pay and Display, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK

2010 Deep and Meaningful, MurmurART, 20 Hoxton Square, London, UK Training, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (Tower Room), UK

2009 Die Budgie History, Dolphin Gallery, Oxford, UK

2008 The Resonance Project, Abbazia di Farfa, Rome, Italy

2007 Oliver Beer, La Viande Gallery, London, UK

Public collections

Centre national des arts plastiques, France FRAC (Fond Régional d'Art Contemporain), Île-de-France, France FRAC, Midi-Pyrénées, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris MACVAL, Ivry-sur-Seine, France Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, France Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Australia Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK Zabludowicz 176 Collection, London, UK Kramlich Collection, San Francisco, USA