The Well-Tempered Us

The Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of works composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for young keyboard instruments learners. In Bachís well temperament system, the tonic of a musical piece can be played in any of the 24 major and minor keys and switched between them at any time, allowing possibilities of musical compositions that are formally more complex, such as fugue. 

Son Ni's artistic practice, on the other hand, centers around distorted spaces that are dynamically constructed through the use of lines, and around rhythmic disruptions in such spaces induced by curves and contours of human figures. Several recurrent motifs can be seen in the narratives of her works. As the tip of her pencil flows freely like a piece of melody being switched in different keys, a harmonious balance in the structure is, however, always present to ensure the main theme to be revisited. With strokes and lines as anchor points and chronological order as an axis, Ni maps out her imagery with back-and-forth articulation of drawing, the physical exercise of her wrist and knuckles, which she has been practicing on a daily basis in the last couple of years. This book, The Well-Tempered Us, can be seen as Niís unique exercises addressing the visual resemblance to musical temperaments, as well as a collection of scores composed through the days spent by the artist on this endeavor.

The Well-Tempered Us
Son Ni

dmp editions, 2020

20 x 29,7 cm
English
Black/Pantone metallic color, offset print

ISBN: 978-98693595-9-7