July 7, 2005
Summer at the Henry: Trimpin goes ‘Pffft’!
The right way to say Phffft — the name of sound artist Trimpin’s innovative exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery — is with a healthy burst of breath and a sort of crescendo toward the end, the artist said with a smile and a sweeping gesture.
And bursts of air are very much at the heart of Trimpin: Pffft. The exhibit, which opened to the public on Saturday, comprises nearly 200 air-activated reeds, flutes, pitched pipes, whistles and various other wind instruments all suspended from the gallery ceiling in various combinations, poised to sound off and interact with gallery visitors.
A dial to the right controls which instruments in the large room play — the music can revolve from one piece to another — and a dial to the left controls the music’s scale and mode. Push the button in between and one of several short compositions by the artist himself starts playing, and the room fills with sound.
Trimpin, who legally goes by one name, is a German-born sound and media artist and the recipient of a MacArthur genius award. In Pffft, Trimpin recreated at the Henry an exhibit that was last installed in 1992. The artist, based now in Seattle, said the years-long gap between installations proved a challenge, because the computer systems he used back then are antiques now.
While describing the work, Trimpin turned the dials that activate it, and his creations piped out music throughout the reverberative gallery. Visitors’ eyes widened, and they moved about the room, grinning and listening from different spots.
“There is no amplification, no loudspeakers, no synthesizer,” the artist said. “Everything is made from found objects.” The cartoonishly extended, Dr. Suesslike orange horns hanging above, for instance, started life as lamp parts.
Though fully installed and piping its music, Pffft is still a work in progress, Trimpin said. He said he probably will return to the gallery space occasionally during the exhibit’s run to write more compositions. “You just have to be in the space,” he said. “It’s impossible to compose anywhere else.”
Images of history
Also on display this summer at the Henry are two exhibits of stunning photography.
- Seeing the Unseen, which opened July 2 and runs until Oct. 2, is an exploration of the earliest stages of and uses for photography. Here are images of the first artificial lighting, early X-rays, stop-action and aerial photography, each among the first of its kind.
- The Old Paris is No More, which opened June 24 and will remain until Oct. 2, shows the creativity of French photographers when the invention of the negative freed their photography from the studio in the 1850s. Here are vivid images of nineteenth century French architecture, historical sites and public spaces, with images also from the catacombs and sewers beneath Paris.
Francis Bacon’s dark vision
Elizabeth Brown, chief curator, director of exhibitions and collections at the Henry, lit up with enthusiasm when standing before and discussing “Study for a Pope IV 1961” a dark, dramatic painting by Francis Bacon (1909–1992) now hanging at the gallery.
The painting, Brown said, shows Bacon’s “utter mastery, and what happens when someone who really paints works with oils on a canvas.” The textures here, the surprises of altered tone here — Brown pointed out parts of the work as she sang its praises. The painting, she said, had recently been purchased by a private collector she knows who lives part-time in Europe. Brown said she asked if the gallery could borrow the painting for three months, and got her wish.
The image is one of many Bacon did that were said to be inspired by Diego Velásquez’s (1599-1660) portait of Pope Innocent X. Bacon started painting dark, abstracted images of Pope Innocent in the late 1940s and continued for years, finally creating 45 such images.
Tamara Moats, the Henry’s curator of education, described the artist in excellent exhibit notes: “Bacon was an unflinching, confrontational and voracious image-maker, obsessively painting while living in a movable feast of friends, patrons and gallery openings. His approach to painting was highly unorthodox, but he used paint like an old master.”
Brown added that few painters cared as much as Bacon “about painting as painting,” as opposed, she said, to “those using paint as a nice way to do an illustration.” Regarding the work from a few feet back, Brown said, “That’s why painting still exists.”
There’s a sort of “rest of the story” to Bacon’s multiple visions of the original Velasquez work, too: Though he spent months in Rome, where the portrait of Pope Innocent X resides, Francis Bacon carefully avoided the painting, and all his life never once laid eyes on the original.
Trimpin speaks … Seattle-based sound artist Trimpin, creator of Pffft, will discuss his work at 7 p.m. tonight, Thursday, July 7, in the Henry Art Gallery Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
… and plays Pffft: Trimpin will be in the Henry Art Gallery to play his interactive sound sculpture:
2–4 p.m., July 10; 6–8 p.m. July 14 and 2–4 p.m. July 17. The sessions are free with museum admission.
For more information: Call 206-543-2280 or visit online at www.henryart.org.
