In From Red Black to Black, from Blue Black to Black, Josiah McElheny's 2023 exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey, the artist offered four wall-hanging works incorporating embedded hand-blown vibrating glass discs that transduce and resonate sound signals. Three are on display until November 7th, 2026 as part of McElheny's show Instrument Object at The Kitchen gallery. These “singing paintings” amplify the musical works by David Grubbs that were especially commissioned for these pieces and which CvsD is proud to present here.

McElheny was inspired and challenged by the alternative methods - freedoms - investigated by Milford Graves and Joe McPhee. These musicians have taken as building blocks mutable rhythms and microtonality rather than regular time and the diatonic scale. Grubbs’ sound source for the four paintings is a slide guitar, with which he patiently explores the timbral effects of microtonal variation. McElheny approaches the notion of color spectrum similarly, as a flexible system with constituent elements to be stretched or compressed, perhaps to a point of infinite possibility.

David Grubbs: lap steel, electric guitar, Serge synthesizer. Recorded June-August, 2023 by Mitch Rackin at Deep Dive, Brooklyn. Mastered by Mitch Rackin.