Oliver Beer “Resonance Paintings”

Tapestry (2022)

Following the object to object briefings and seeing my chosen objects, I needed to do further research on sound waves and came across an artist named Oliver Beer. He’s come up with a series of paintings that he’s called “Resonance Paintings”. He used a type of powder paint and a speaker playing a certain frequency under the canvas to make the paintings. The result is the pattern of the sound waves moving through the canvas and powder paint. He somehow gets the powder paint to stay in the patterns formation with some sort of clear coating or maybe the powder paint infuses the canvas? I’m unsure exactly his process for completing the painting. He also based the frequency he was using for each painting off of different ceramic vessels, highlighting that everyday objects have a certain resonance that they vibrate with.

To me it’s quite ethereal to take everyday objects, find the frequency they resonate with, and then create a painting with those resonance frequencies. These paintings intrigue me because there is no human interference with the painting itself, it’s purely the canvas resonating to the frequency he is playing and what is revealed is that frequencies pattern. It’s almost like magic. Sound/music is something most of us interact with every single day. To make these paintings without human interference other than creating the environment that can encapsulate them is so clever to me.