Why Patterns?

Artists: Noa Eshkol, Daan Gielis, Radna Rumping, Damon Zucconi, Milan Grygar, Lina Lapelyte, Sergei Tcherepnin, Les Trucs, and Hannah Weinberger

Why Patterns? is a group exhibition that brings together contemporary and historical artists who share a common interest in experimental music. In their work they explore forms of coincidence, improvisation, and abstract notational systems.

The exhibition will include sound sculptures, audio, scores, textiles, video, drawings, and performance. Its title is borrowed from a 1978 musical composition by Morton Feldman with the same name. Feldman was one of the many international composers and musicians that Ad van ‘t Veer brought to Middelburg for the high-profiled festival Nieuwe Muziek, which ran from 1976 to 2003. 

For his composition Why Patterns? Feldman was inspired by abstract expressionism and rugs from the Middle East. Feldman saw a link between the way in which carpet makers dealt with pattern making, in which one pattern was never more significant than another, and the way in which he worked as a composer. The exhibition Why Patterns? will explore how non-hierarchal methodologies are being used in artistic practice today. 

Funded by Mondriaan Fund and City of Middelburg.