From Picasso’s cubist musical instruments to Wassily Kandinsky’s synesthesia, there is a long tradition of visual artists using music as muse. In a new exhibition that opened Tuesday July 5th at Galerie Quynh, French artist Thierry Bernard-Gotteland takes his cue from heavy metal music and culture to create a provocative installation. 

 

For A Physical Obedience Of A Certain Geometry [Nihil Sublime] Bernard-Gotteland combines text, images, objects and sound to create an environment that is part intimate space, part aftermath of a live concert and part private fantasy. A faux leather bed dangles from the ceiling, stage lights are arranged in a pentagram and the whirring of industrial fans creates discordant noise from a guitar. By evoking our dreams, nightmares and phantasms, Bernard-Gotteland investigates ideas of defiance, destruction, order, control and power. 

 

A lecturer in the fine art department at RMIT, Bernard-Gotteland received his MFA from the School of Fine Art in Grenoble. He most recently took part in San Art’s recent To Ho Chi Minh City with Love.