Lost Notes

Lost Notes surveys the widely expansive landscape of visual art’s representation of music. Varied, yet cohesive, Lost Notes tells the story of translation, transcription, and transformation. From a first century sculpture to a contemporary performance piece from Ragnar Kjartansson, Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, this exhibition encourages conversation on not only what is gained through visual representation, but also more importantly, what is lost.

 Juxtaposition

 Placing the Thymiaterion in the Form of a Singer Seated on an Altar against Ragnar Kjartansson’s creates a very apparent and very visceral space between the visual and the auditory. Colliding the virtual singer with the “real” singer expands the possibilities that the visual can provide, but also represent what is lost as well.

Loss 

The works included in this exhibitionattempts to capture the auditory manifest themselves in not only different mediums, but also different representations. While these works offer substitution for the experience of listening, they concurrently represent a loss between the two mediums. This loss can be clearly represented through works like Robert Rauschenberg’s Music Box and Isa Genzjen’s Hitachi, which provide a physical cite of this loss.  And others virtualize this space like Billy Monk’s The Catacombs. Other works like Pablo Picasso’s Violin with sheet of music and Robert Motherwell’s Stravinsky Spring, desperately attempt to close this space through a collision of sight and sound. The loss can come from the absence of the instrument as in Isamu Noguchi’s Musical Weathervane, and from the absence of the artist herself in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Corset-style body suit with garters, worn by Madonna. With all of the motion of performance, but without the music, Pablo Picasso’s Madoliniste, make this loss even more present.

Lost

 What is really lost between the mediums? Is it just the musical waves, or is it something more profound? Visual Representation can also offer more possibility than the silence of an un-played instrument in Georges Braque’s Violin and Candlestick, but also calls attention to the space between musician and music, silence and sound.The instillation ends with Robert Rauschenberg’s Music (tribute), which conveys loudness without ever playing a note, music of representation. Finally breaking down the barriers of representation and music, loss and lost.