Recomposition (Women Playing Music, after Kitagawa Utamaro), , 2020
52.5 x 39.3 in (h x w)
Fragments of the artist's grandmother's piano, Cello, Coloured pencils, Paintbrush, chess pieces, domino pieces, organ pipe, metronome fragments, laughing gas canister, books about music, tobacco pipe, violin fragments, bag pipe, one-string fiddle, sectioned and set in resin; gesso Courtesy of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery
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To create his two-dimensional sculptures, Oliver Beer (Kent, England, 1985)
slices through objects with surgical precision, embedding the pieces in resin so that only their edges remain visible, set flush with the gesso surface. He thereby transforms three dimensions into two, creating a ‘physical cubism.’ In his most recent works, Beer incorporates elements from his grandmother Oma’s piano. Oma was prevented from studying music by her father, himself a violinist. She did not make her first composition until the age of 87, which – unable to transcribe herself – she communicated to her teenage grandson through a combination of singing and drawing. Without any musical training, Oma was never able to play this piano and, poignantly, this silencing of her music is represented through the silencing of the piano keys, which was also the artist’s childhood instrument. As Beer notes, “Although my grandmother was born in 1913 – the sentiment behind [her story] is still relevant in the 21st century when music is both a force of inclusion and exclusion. I wonder what music my grandmother could have made if the patriarchal society of her day had not excluded her from mainstream musical culture, and I feel conflicted about how Oma’s music has only now become audible through me.”

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