Painting has the unique ability to be simultaneously material and illusory. My work’s modal subject, the spectrum, lends itself at once to image and transparency. The persistent implementation of this motif further affords it the capacity to disappear, like a hum, categorized as background noise. Through this process, the field of color fuses to become both surface and void. In displaying their complete spectral manifestations, my paintings act not only as color fields, but as monochromes. The self-completing painting is at once an accumulation of parts and an autonomously emitting whole.
My interest in creating full representations of data, or unified utterances, may stem from my difficulty in hearing the frequencies associated with speech. In conversations, a congregation of predictive systems work in tandem to assign value to pieces of abstract sound and gesture, constructing a semiotic hierarchy that ultimately delivers the idea. My paintings act as visual predictive systems by establishing a familiar patten within the field. With this in mind, the aesthetics of incoherence can also be amplified. I methodically depart from the established system, aiming to embed varying states of continuity and disarray into my paintings.
In keeping with the examination of color’s relationship to sound, I have been working to translate sheet music into color fields. For these paintings, the chromatic and musical scales are equated, and I implement this system of relationships meticulously in copying data from page to canvas. It is important to me that this process if systematic, not interpretive. The resulting paintings are a visualization of musical harmony in terms of color harmony. For my most recent show, On the Hum (2020), I added the chromatic key to a keyboard, and viewers were invited to explore a painting (“Your Song” by Elton John) through sound.
- Brianna Bass, 2020
Bio
Brianna Bass (b. 1990) is a painter living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is a co-founder, curator, and writer for Mineral House Media, an artist-run platform designed to elevate Southeastern contemporary art through interviews, analyses, podcasts, mini-documentaries, and an online residency program. Brianna received her BFA in Painting and Drawing in 2013 from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. During that time, she chaired the Student Advisory Committee, and was a member of the Apothecary Gallery Committee. She was awarded the Peggy Stagmire Scholarship and the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship, for which she was invited to exhibit work at the university’s Cress Gallery II. She has participated in public lectures with Stoveworks and Shapeshifter, and has been selected for juried exhibitions at Groundfloor Gallery, and SECAC 2019. Her most recent solo exhibition, “On the Hum,” opened in 2020 at Fluorescent Gallery in Knoxville, TN. Writings on Brianna’s work have been featured in Locate Arts and in the PULSE newspaper. She had been selected for online representation by Locate Arts, in Tennessee, and her writing for Mineral House Media has been featured in Number: Inc Magazine, highlighting recent trends in Tennessee art. Brianna will be attending graduate school in pursuit of her MFA in the fall of 2020.