SYNESTHESIA – WITH SENSATION PATHS CROSS, IMAGES ARE HEARD, SOUND IS SEEN
Saturday afternoon I arrived at the Brooklyn Museum. Walking down the block to a warehouse like building, some local kids are hanging outside of the gallery, Five Myles.
The gallery had music playing and there are around 10 piece of large and small scale paintings. The music sounded like some kind of “bell” instrument, it made me calm like in a temple, but with interesting mix of beat and rhythm. The show is call “Synesthesia – with sensation paths cross, images are heard, sound is seen.”
Joseph Wooldridge is a hybrid art painter. He uses the Tibetan payer bowl as receptacles to paint on canvas while he meditates. He collaborated with Charles Fambro who is a sound artist, and mixes the sounds of Joseph’s practice with electro acoustic music. While the music rings though my head, I looked at the paintings closely. Each brush strokes and the layers of paint, I visualized his mediation through their collaboration– The sound of painting.
The painting is built by drawing the character “2”
Tibetan prayer bowls, Joseph has used them as his paint buckets, and by inviting the public to freely perform them, the sound of the bowls lets his paintings become an on-going meditation.
After the show, I sat under the sun outside of the warehouse. Hanne Tierney, the gallery founder told me it was originally built as a showroom for Buicks (American car). Five Myles is an continuity of Hanne’s son who was killed in Sierra Leone working as a journalist. Every two years they bring work from East Africa, from well-known, established artists as well as unknown artists. Since 1999 the gallery has been a community that lies outside the mainstream art scene, with the help of local participation and the will to stick to their original roots.
Synesthesia – with sensation paths cross, images are heard, sound is seen
Date: May 10th – June 14th, 2008
Open: 13:00 – 18:00
Place: Five Myles
Address: 558 Saint Johns Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Tel: +1 718 783 4438
https://www.fivemyles.org
Text: Josephine Sze Chan
Photos: Josephine Sze Chan