OPTO PHON

Barbara Proksch is a German visual artist. After having studied lettering and illustration, she first worked in graphic design and theatrical painting before in 1982 deciding to become a freelance artist, concerning herself mainly with drawing. Her works are characterized by her long-lasting fascination for letters and geometrical figures. Another thread of influence stems from her background in theatrical painting: the body language and the physical aspects of painting. From the beginning, a further aspect has drawn her attention, namely the sounds that occur while drawing and writing, and the way they influence the resulting work. She noticed that the sounds made by the tools she uses feed back into her drawing process, and that just like speech and writing - in a linguistic sense - cannot be decoupled from each other, drawing and listening cannot either: Eye and ear become partners, drawing becomes a performance with the specific tools and materials used as musical instruments. This observation has led to the development of her group of works called Opto_Phon, a name which, from the 1990s onwards, Proksch uses for performances that draw upon this synaesthetic process: Usually, Proksch works on large sheets of paper mounted like drumheads and treated with various tools (scrapers, brushes, pens, knives, twigs, etc.), the sounds amplified through contact microphones.