We wish you –
from our hearts –
a joyful holiday and a new year blessed with success and good health
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In the end, there is a tonal scheme – but the physical existence of an organ starts with the melting process, the liquefaction of the "materia", the tin and lead. The melted mass is cast over a cloth with a flowing movement and thus receives an initial solid form which is capable of presentation. It is the positive – or, depending on the point of view, the negative – of this woven structure which embodies a pattern and becomes thereby a matrix capable of presentation, leaving traces.
These traces inspired me to make the "transmutation of lead into gold" visible, an idea the alchemists had, of a process on the outside which finds its equivalent on the inside.
This symbolizes the transformation of crude metal into the instrument, the organ, the primus inter pares of western musical culture, a symbol of spirituality and of the path leading from earthly material existence to the spirit.
The first print shows the raw state not yet touched by human hand, the "prima materia". The blackness comes just from the pattern of the casting.
In the second print one can see the intervention by means of burnishing from the periphery. The tool, the human hand, creates space for light and brightness without being able to transform completely the characteristics inherent in the material.
The third image shows the continuing elimination of the "prima materia" by the craftsman’s hand, the shape becoming visible in the geometrical figure. The circle symbolizes the perfect form, here still unfinished, submitting itself rather reluctantly.
Roughly speaking, the process of building an organ is a process of creation. Who knows how much experience, knowledge and human development are woven into the construction of an organ? Maybe we can say that there is no beginning and, hopefully, no end to the struggle towards improvement, perfection and the good.
Gary Stern
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In 2006 we engaged an artist to create our New Year card for three years. The only condition was to use the theme of "organ" in any form in the pieces.
The decision to let another artist create a second series with the same subject led us through an internal selection procedure to Gary Stern (www.garystern.ch), a Swiss artist, who appealed to us with his versatility.
We had been quite taken by his etchings, a technique which Gary Stern has been addressing intensely for some time past.
Our handling of tin and lead when making organ pipes fascinated him from the beginning. This procedure of making pipes, the transformation of tin and lead ingots into liquid metal which takes shape again when cast into solid tin sheet, the treatment, cutting, moulding and soldering: in his etchings he reproduces this metamorphosis.
The basis and the workpiece for his endeavour are the crude tin plates cut to a size of 16.6 x 18.6 cm. Their woven texture, which is created by casting on cloth, forms the matrix for Gary Stern’s work.
Orgelbau Kuhn
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Profile:
Gary Stern was born in 1958 and grew up in Zurich. From 1980 to 1983 he completed an apprenticeship as scenic designer and scenic painter in the Lester Polakow Studio and Forum of Stage Design, New York. After returning to Switzerland, he executed works inter alia for the free theatre and dance scene of Zurich. He works as an independent artist, scenic painter and teacher for scenic painting at the vocational school for design in Zurich.
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