What does sound look like? How does it feel, how is it captured in physical form? What is the structure of an audible moment? These questions come to mind with “Visual Music: A MARN Member Exhibition,” where dozens of small-scale pieces grace the walls of the ever-vibrant Art*Bar.
The Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN) has been around for more than 10 years and offers professional support and opportunities for artists. This exhibition solicited pieces within certain size parameters, but the subject of music and its interpretation was fairly open. One directive noted that pieces submitted should consider harmony, rhythm, tempo and other dynamic qualities of music. To break visual art into its barest form, things like line, color, shape, texture and space come to the forefront. Here, they are used to connect with the purely abstract sense of the musical world.
Ultimately, the subjects and styles in this show are wide-ranging. Some artists are literal, making representations of song titles and lyrics, while others go for pure abstraction. Luis Arroyo offers strong images of musicians on parade and in the street, capturing something of their physical efforts as they play beneath the shimmering sunlight. Judy Tolley uses collage in her Marian Anderson, an ode to the great opera singer composed of dark fragments. The limited color palette and nostalgic fluctuations between light and dark make for a compelling, though ambiguous, composition.
One other feature of this exhibition that offers a special appeal for participation is the awarding of cash prizes to three pieces, plus awards to honorable mention recipients. The top prize went to Les Leffingwell for his Urban Fugue, described as representing architectural rhythms and motifs. The composition places the viewer Downtown, standing on Broadway and looking toward St. Paul Avenue. The stone edifices of buildings beyond the strong horizontals of the freeway are handled with lightness and the sense of distance flattened. In respect to the exhibition theme, it is as though Leffingwell is looking for that place where what we see is recast, to see not places and objects but relationships of structure.
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Through June 18 at Art*Bar, 722 E. Burleigh St.
