GOLDBERG CYCLE

Johannes Buchholz

Opening, Sa. 21.01.2006, 6pm  
24.01.2006 - 25.02.2006

In the last few years Johannes Buchholz has done thirty-one drawings based on the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach, thus creating his own Goldberg Cycle. The drawings are not so much a synaesthetic visualisation of the music as an examination of Bach's composition with both its intensively imaginative structures and formal rigor and symmetry. Each drawing relates to one of the variations, translating musical structure into a graphic syntagma that behaves differently according to the respective variation: Buchholz shifts from the architectural and figurative to the abstract, approaching each variation individually while deploying recurring motives and retaining the coherence of the whole. As well as the foundational structures, the drawings also thematise the tonal evolution of the music, focusing on melody and rhythm or on compositional structure, depending on the reference variation. This has lead to the production of a notation system, which becomes increasingly apparent when looking at the drawings while listening to the variations. Buchholz has succeeded in creating a personal interpretation of Bach's work.

Looking at the drawings and hearing the music simultaneously generates a complementary relationship between the understanding of the two, each of which nevertheless remain isolated as autarc works.