ON WAVELENGTHS
2020/21
Image-sound installation consisting of archive-solid pigment prints in frame boxes and sound.
variable size

Sissa Micheli's most recent works are characterised by ontology and an understanding of science that are directly related to relevant issues of our time. The artist translates her observations of reality into a metaphorical form to explore the limits of our perception. In a variety of photographs, video works and objects, she questions the everyday and the familiar, opening up new perspectives and ways of seeing. The surface of the image always refers to something else, something behind it, to a hidden level that can only be guessed at. Curious and explorative, she approaches her fields of investigation and creates a sensual and enigmatic microcosm.

In the exhibition ON WAVELENGTHS, Micheli shows six photographic works from her photo-sound series of the same name. They are abstract long exposures of textiles thrown into the picture. Like de-subjectified shells, precisely selected pieces of clothing in different colours float in empty space, celebrating the ephemeral and transient in a sensually dynamic game. The works seem to have a metaphysical aura that tells of lightness and gravity, of presence and absence, and of wavelengths and vibrations. The photographies are juxtaposed with a sound installation. Here Micheli refers to Sir Isaac Newton, who was engaged in systematic observations of the phenomenon of colour-sound. He let sunlight fall through a prism into a dark room, projected the resulting spectrum of coloured light onto a flat surface and measured the sizes of the colour ranges with a scale, which he then assigned to the seven tones of the musical scale. In Micheli's project, the exposure time corresponds to the duration of the tones and the frequency of the colours were translated into frequencies of the tones. Each tone frequency has an octave analogue colour frequency in the colour light spectrum. The assignment of a tone to a colour is done mathematically by multiple doubling (octavation) of the tone frequency up to the light spectrum and conversion of the light frequency into the wavelength of the colour.

Micheli's exhibition focuses on the sensual relationship of human beings to image and sound. The installation of visual sound is understood as a subtle concert in the perception of image and sound.