Wiels | EN

It is never completely quiet anywhere in the world. We are always surrounded by sound, whether it is in the form of voices, traffic, music, nature, or even our own bodies. Yet we usually give more of our attention to what we see than what we hear.

The works in A Sudden Sound describe the moments in which sound jumps into our conscious foreground. A monotonous background noise may suddenly stop and reveal itself by its absence, while another sound may trigger a long-forgotten memory.

In Lise Harlev’s spray-painted works, short sentences are placed on top of graphic shapes. The shapes are arranged close to one another but without ever touching. Their edges seem to optically vibrate, energizing the space in between, similar to how a sound activates a place.

The exhibition points to the many ways in which our surroundings affect us through our hearing. Instead of presenting these moments as actual sound, Harlev attempts to visualize the unseeable and put into words hearing experiences that are hard to describe. Perhaps it is in between the described and perceived sounds that our sense of hearing becomes, in a way, visible to us.