steve roden
paintings, 2005-2006
solo exhibition: lines & spaces, susanne vielmetter la projects, 2006
group exhibition: soundwaves: the fine art of sampling, MCASD, la jolla, 2007

i began this series of works in early 2005, using various self made systems of translating a single line of a classical music into a series of formal decisions and rules. depending on the amount of notes in each line of music, each painting involved between 60 and 130 notes; which then translated into the same number of decisions and actions. of course, there are also a lot of intutive movements in response to the pre-detemined decisions.

the score, which i found in my grandmother's garage many years ago, has 96 lines. over the next year or two i hope to create a single work for every line, and thus playing the entire score in various visual forms. these are not visualized music, nor an attempt to capture sound in image. they are works birthed from an intimate engagement with a language i cannot read properly - and like a performance of music, they have been determined by a reading of a musical score.

along with the musical score, a number of other influences have found more intuitive ways into the works, including a 2005 visit to corbusier's chapel at ronchamp, rudolf steiner's goetheanum and his writings on architecture, a book on music at the paris exhibition of 1889, giuseppe terrangi's danteum, alexander graham bell's kites, myron stout's writings, and alvaro siza's serpentine gallery pavillion.


title: a beginning of brown paths and openings
size: 40" x 48"
media: oil, acrylic, polyurethane on linen



title: the brevity of resonant drifting
size: 36 " x 44"
media: oil, acrylic, on linen



title: celestial fallings and flyings (a new kite for alexander graham bell)
size: 50" x 64 "
media: oil, acrylic on linen



title: frozen.fallen.open.broken.
size: 36" x 48"
media: oil, acrylic, enamel, on linen



title: before the labyrinth, after the trees
size: 30" x 36"
media: oil, acrylic on linen

to see more works from this series click here

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