It’s hard to find a band that has been so fruitfully involved in the visual arts as Sonic Youth, from painting to photography, from video to poetry. Every album, every stage of the long artistic route of Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, reflects a hybridization of creative processes, different forms of “cross-pollination”.

Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix, produced in close collaboration with the band, illustrates the many collaborative and multidisciplinary projects that the members of this band have taken part in over the course of 27 years - the numerous artistic liaisons with filmmakers, writers, painters, performers and other creative minds.

Displayed across the four floors of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy, the works selected offer a sort of “alternative history of contemporary culture”, in the words Roland Groenenboom, curator of the exhibition.

Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Richard Prince, Tony Oursler, Richard Kern, Rita Ackermann, Isa Genzken, Jenny Holzer, Steven Parrino, Wilhelm Sasnal, Gus Van Sant, Jeff Wall are just few of the artists included in this prismatic jigsaw that documents the band’s vision. Sonic Youth’s cultural perspective is expressed through a multitude of voices, most of which have limned the fascinating border between music and art in the New York of the early ‘80s. So Sensational Fix comes across a deep exploration into this astonishing period, when concepts like punk, noise, and no wave influenced the whole underground movement. But also the fervent West Coast scene of the late ‘70s is well exemplified, through the works of Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, and Spike Jonze amongst others. Moreover, a special pavilion conceived for the occasion by Dan Graham and housing a comprehensive archive of sound material lets the visitors investigate  prolific band’s discography. The show, which runs till January 4, will then move to the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Malmö Konsthall in Sweden, and the Spanish Centro de Arte Huarte in Pamplona.