Oliver Beer Resonance Painting (Cri du Loup), 2021

The work of multimedia artist Oliver Beer draws on his training in musical composition to explore the acoustic potential of objects and spaces through sculpture, video, installation and performance. In his series of Resonance Paintings, the artist reverses his process, making sound manifest as oscillating waves of charcoal reverberating across the surface of the canvas. Beer creates these works by placing the canvas horizontally above a speaker, allowing the sound waves generated by the music to move the loose charcoal across it. In this way, he produces a visual record of the music, freezing the intangible medium in time and producing an image that is reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist painting, though it is made without the hand of the artist.