OLIVER BEER

Beer is known for pushing the boundaries between visual art, music and space. In his Resonance Paintings series – developed over years of research and experimentation – he employs sound vibrations to compose precise forms on canvas, ‘using sound as my paintbrush’.

Drawing on both his musical and artistic training, Beer plays precise harmonies through loudspeakers positioned beneath horizontally oriented canvases scattered with dry pigment, adjusting the frequencies to produce swelling, rippling patterns that correspond to the musical vibrations. He captures these dynamic forms using a fixing technique he has developed, binding the pigment to the canvas to transform the ephemeral shape of sound into something visible and lasting.

The new paintings on view emerge directly from this music – translating the sonic vibrations and harmonies of The Cave into a visual language, and thereby deepening the dialogue between sound, space and form. In doing so, Beer follows in the lineage of 20th and 21st-century abstract painters who sought to express musical structures through form and colour. The presentation of the Resonance Paintings on the ground floor of the gallery is accompanied by music from a one-off vinyl record created for the exhibition. A stereo mix of the eight voices heard in The Cave, it further elucidates the paintings’ origins within the musical harmonies wielded by Beer to create them.