Mario Radev: P-PO-PE-PA

Pi Soundworks presents P-PO-PE-PA, a new exhibition by Mario Radev and the culmination of his five-week residency at PSW.

Radev has built a family of tactile poems - organettes which are hand-cranked devices assembled from the mechanisms of obsolete objects. These improvised apparatus physically connect to and ultimately control the animations and sonic instruments which complete the  works. Everything within the installation is powered and performed by the viewer.

With the central work 'Lance', the visitor turns the handle and flips through the frames of a meticulously drawn graphite animation. Whilst the surrounding frames remain static, the embedded screen allows the operator to observe the movement of the frames at the exact speed and direction they want. The viewer becomes the performer.

The historical organette, a domestic crank organ of the late nineteenth century, was powered by its player while a paper roll supplied the notes. Radev carries the same arrangement into moving image. Where industrial machines were built to take work off the hand, these give it back.

The residency has also drawn out the auditory side of Radev's practice. The clicks, ratchets and hum of the mechanisms are part of the work. When played simultaneously, the organettes allow visitors to explore the relationship between them by performing and ultimately creating their own unique compositions. This recalls musique concrète's own origin: Pierre Schaeffer's locked groove (1948) which made a single fragment of sound repeat endlessly, detaching it from its source and turning everyday noise into musical material.

Radev is the first artist in residence at PSW, launching an ongoing residency programme. Each residency begins with the same open invitation: the glass-box project space at the centre of the gallery, to be used however the artist chooses, with sound as a starting point.

P-PO-PE-PA will remain on view through 14 November. In November, Radev returns to PSW with Points of Entelechy, a live audio-visual performance with Lutfi Othman, 7-8 November.

Opening Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12–6 PM

Saturday, 12–5 PM

Sunday by appointment

Press & Enquiries: For press enquiries, additional information, preview requests, interviews, or images, please contact:

hellopisoundworks@gmail.com

WhatsApp: +44 (0)77 18 42 5153

About the Artist

Mario Radev is a Bulgarian artist and filmmaker based in London. His multidisciplinary practice spans animation, drawing, performance, and moving image, with the dynamics of movement and the ways living forms respond to their environment at its centre. Animation serves as his primary medium, allowing for the temporal, rhythmic, and fragile dimensions of these adaptive processes. His works reimagine movement across time, interweaving the rhythms of living forms with the passage of light illuminating traces of events.

Radev’s practice is shaped by close observations of life cycles and a desire to evoke complex, often contradictory emotions, particularly in response to a world defined by acceleration and instability. Through loops, repetitive sounds, and a meticulous frame-by-frame animation process, his work becomes a meditative act of mark-making and intuition. The pieces invite immersion, slowness, and an awareness of subtle shifts in motion and time.

At the core of his work is a dualistic approach, a negotiation between control and surrender, narrative and abstraction, science and metaphysics. Across all his work, the focus remains on the viewer’s experience, creating space for open-ended narratives where transformation can occur.

About PSW: Pi Soundworks (PSW) is an independent project gallery founded by Jade Y. Turanli (founder of Pi Artworks ) and Liam Howe (founder of 90’s acclaimed trip hop band Sneaker Pimps) Operating across exhibition-making, recording, installation, and live performance, PSW explores the intersection of contemporary art and sound through commissions, residencies, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Following its initial launch in Fitzrovia in 2025, PSW now establishes its permanent home at Perseverance Works, Shoreditch.