CSMA introduces Mauricio Rodriguez’s exhibition Meaning the Score on display September 20-November 10 at the Mohr Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday, September 20 from 6:00-8:00pm. Get to know Mauricio Rodriguez as he tells us about his background, inspiration and choice of medium.
Mauricio Rodriguez
Tell us a little about yourself. How did you become interested in art?
I am a musician by training. I primarily compose music, so my interest in and appreciation of visual art has always been shaped by my experiences as a musician. For me music is, to a great extent, about gesture, shape, texture, timbre and space. All these concepts are also present in painting, sculpture, architecture, and even in ceramics and photography. I have to say that whenever I see an art piece that is appealing to me, it literally resonates inside me. It “sounds in my head” as a very special kind of music. When I create my visual work, it is primarily conceived as “music” that takes a visual shape but nevertheless is composed of sounds.
Did you have access to art education in school?
Unfortunately, I never received any formal art classes in school. However, one of my earliest memories as a kid was spending my savings to get oil paints that I would use on unconventional surfaces, such as rocks, barks, skin or feathers. Back then I thought that I would grow up to be a painter, but after reading William Fleming’s book Art, Music & Ideas, I felt deeply impressed by the multiple relationships among art forms. From there onwards, I got into music composition.
Tell us about a great music teacher you had.
I was very lucky to have always studied with great musicians that helped me to better understand and appreciate music in all aspects. Composer Julio Estrada taught me the very unique thing of transcribing complex sounds using an open canvas instead of using staff (music) paper. This experience gave me such great freedom to explore the artistic representation of music that I treasure this experience as one of the most important things I have learned as a musician.
Pieces from Meaning the Score by Mauricio Rodriguez
How do you balance teaching art to others and creating art for yourself?
I teach because I always learn from students. I think that a classroom should always be a hub for exploring new ideas and creations. This is especially true when you teach an artistic discipline. Teaching feeds my creations and I always like sharing my art practice with my students hoping I would trigger new ideas to help them in their learning process.
What inspired you to create the pieces for Meaning the Score?
Meaning The Score is an exhibition of graphic music scores where I explore the dynamic relation of music and its multiple forms of notation. The endless plasticity of music notation has inspired in me the possibility of “listening” to sound and music by appreciating their visual representations.
Your exhibition includes “Tyscores.” Tell us more about them and why you like using an Olympia SG-3 typewriter as a medium.
I call the hand-typed engravings produced on an old, heavy-duty music typewriter (pictured) “Tyscores.” The keyboard layout of the Olympia model I use for my work has a reduced set of music notation symbols, so it does not have the alpha-numeric characters that you normally find in typewriters. This is a very sensitive machine, prone to producing imperfections and errors, so you really have to work hard to overcome those artifacts. Typesetting with a music writer is a very demanding manual process, but I enjoy it because it is extremely lively work. Music typewriters never had a widespread use after lithographic music printing, so the works of this exhibit also aim to revive an engraving practice that is almost unknown in the times of generalized usage of music notation software.
Left to right: En la maison Dedalus, Berkeley Theory Manuscript, Paris 1375; Belle, Bonne, Sage score by Baude Cordier.
What are the influences in your art? Where do you find inspiration?
There is a long tradition of creators conceiving the writing of a music score as an autonomous form of plastic art. For instance, since medieval times you could find heart-shaped scores to typeset “love songs” or a circle-shaped music staff to represent an “infinite canon” or carol. I see the layout of these scores as a fundamental part of the intention and expression of the music.
In most recent times, composers like John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Earle Brown or Dieter Schnebel are monumental figures when it comes to graphic or visual scores. Of course I feel very inspired by all those references, but I think art is a very non-linear and holistic enterprise and everything we experience is or could be part of it.
Anything else you would like to share with us about your exhibition or yourself?
I just feel very lucky to present these pieces at the Mohr Gallery since I believe this is the ideal space for works that intersect art and music, or music and art. I am really looking forward to any feedback from this great community.
Learn more about Mauricio Rodriguez here.
