For 5enses' new exhibit in Coquitlam, the five artists want you to stand back and let the instruments play in your mind.
Their abstract pieces that were composed specifically for their Place des Arts show represent wild colours and designs that are meant to stir the soul, said Mena Martini who is part of the group also made up of Lori Bagneres, Catherine Fields, Therese Joseph and Sara Morison.
The artists got the idea for their latest display, titled From Sound to Silence, from studying philosophers, musicians and painters, among others.
Plato, said Martini, was the first person in Western civilization to speak about the link between sound and sight. He used words like "tone" and "harmony" to describe visual art.
Beethoven, who was deaf in his later years, also exposed the relationship between his music and the senses. When he wrote in D-major, he called it the orange key while B-minor was the black key. And even his Romantic era counterpart, Schubert, claimed to have seen a maiden dressed in white when he composed in E-minor.
But Martini said it was Kandinsky who brought the connection of colour stimulation to the forefront with his abstract art.
He stated his correspondence between colours and musical timbres were a form of synesthesia, which allows a person to appreciate sound and colour with two or more senses at the same time. For example, when he saw blue, he heard a flute playing; for a deeper blue, there was the cello, etc.
"What he was talking about was vibrations for the soul," Martini said, adding, "In our show, the sound is the richness of colours, the movement of shapes. And the silence is the pregnancy of nothingness after the immediate discovery."
5enses, which opened its display at Place des Arts last Thursday, has about 35 works that can be seen in the Atrium Gallery until Aug. 2.
It is the first time 5enses has exhibited in the Coquitlam area, Martini said.
To view From Sound to Silence, drop in at Place des Arts (1120 Brunette Ave.) Mondays and Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Maillardville centre is closed on the weekends for the summer.
