Musician 2018

Thiago Boecan’s collage, Musician, brings together found images to conjure the layered experience of sound. I imagine Boecan sifting through images, letting the material guide the process. The monochrome palette feels gritty, like a hazy memory. There’s a chicken wire guitar body and the neck is made up of faces. The instrument is full of holes, so the sound it makes must be odd, full of feedback and background noise. The musician is perched on a chair, and you can almost see a city scene in the cut-outs that make up the body. Perhaps this musician draws inspiration from the urban environment. I feel like I can relate to that. The artist is creating a new kind of music from fragments of the world. Boecan’s collage technique reminds me of Hannah Hoch, who did amazing work with the same method. It makes you think of how artists across generations can use similar approaches to piece together new meanings.