Vincent Maria Jäger
Painting to Music: Interpreted Translation of the Sonic
(Title image: Painted to Guitar as Cello 1)
I am drawn to the interplay of artwork and space. The moment an artwork is placed into a void, the artwork acts as an extended object, participating with its empty surroundings. Let’s say, there are two works of art placed within a given space. A conversation between two mediums of art, that are formally distinct from each other, and thus become opposites within the above mentioned space. Thereupon, the space must be physical, raw and minimal in its aesthetic, this particularly allows mediums of distinct genre to be performed and meshed together.
I am interested in art that is moving, and art that is still, and their meeting. Music that is uncertain, and the image that is fixed, and their relationship as one. I am interested in the sonic aspect within space, and how it can be translated into visual form. With the means of painting I hope to perform the sound’s adequate body of representation.
My research exists around interpreting the materiality of sound with the means of a paintbrush, thus visually extracting the sound’s shape and form. I hope to be the attentive listener who actively prescribes the sound’s aesthetic behaviour, to be the occupant of a sonic space, echoing (trans. Kaiku: Finnish for echo) the actuality of sound, translating invisible matter into visible form.
“Kaiku”
In the case of my practice, when I am creating a painting within a space of sound, the brush strokes’ intent are to be rhythmically consonant with the waves of sound. It is not for them to become in-sync, but rather act as an echoing of each other. It is where I suppose, I would create a series in which an echo-latency becomes apparent, to be each other’s ‘Kaiku’, echoing each other’s opposite, and thus creating a sequence of conversation.
“Painting to Sound”
“It does not develop or increase in time, but time increases in silence. It is as though time had been sown into silence, as though silence had absorbed it; as though silence were the soil in which time grows to fullness. Silence is not visible, and yet its existence is clearly apparent. It extends to the farthest distances, yet is so close to us that we can feel it as concretely as we feel our own bodies. It is intangible, yet we can feel it as directly as we feel materials and fabrics. It cannot be defined in words, yet it is quite definite and unmistakable. In no other phenomenon are distance and nearness, range and immediacy, the all embracing and the particular, so united as they are in silence.” Max Picard, 1952
