Clara Oppel's works are situated at the interfaces between sound, space, installation, and sculpture. She combines sound into a symbiosis with image and space, so as to create spatial sculptures which can be walked around in. By means of audio recordings, she penetrates deep into the materiality of perception. “It's like zooming in,” she says, “but with the microphone, in order to make a microorganism audible.” Particles of original sound are extracted and modified to the point of becoming unrecognizable. She works in particular with the construction of visual elements, as well as with the movements and transformations of acoustic signals in space. The artist is concerned with the interactions between acoustic and visual perception. Both these factors determine the space in equal measure, and the give-and-take between them creates a field of dynamic tension. Immaterial sound acquires a physical appearance and, together with the sculptural elements, gives rise to synaesthetic situations. This formative interplay engenders the spatial sculptures.

Each work evinces intermodal qualities, situations which are at the same time both image and sound. The acoustic and sculptural inner life of the objects and installations takes us on journeys in multimedial space, where all situations have a reciprocal impact on each other. It is only through the amalgamation of these auditory, visual, and spatial components of equal value that the interrelated whole achieves the goal sought by the artist—the sound sculpture.

Coverphoto © Clara Oppel