It seems self-evident that sound is destined for the ears and images are created for the eyes. At the same time, it is difficult to isolate the aural field from the visual one. Although most of the works displayed below are entirely silent, they evoke sounds in our imagination, making us aware of how intensely we ‘hear’ with our eyes. While viewing the artworks, ‘Play’ invites us to immerse ourselves in a variety of sound associations that link seeing with hearing.

Some artists nurture themselves by their parallel activity as musicians and composers. One of them is Christian Marclay, who has mastered the idea of visualising sound: in ‘Actions: Splat Splooch Whap Blub Squich’ (2014), inspired by comic books he used onomatopoetic expressions to evoke sounds made by dripping, pouring or smudging paint; for ‘Sound Holes’ (2005) he photographed the steel loudspeakers found at the entrance of buildings to draw our attention to the sound holes in musical instruments; in the series ‘False Advertising’ (1994), he designed posters where he billed himself as five fictitious musicians ranging from a heavy metal guitarist to a classical violinist and humorously played with our expectations of musical and visual genres. Another interdisciplinary artist was Terry Adkins, with his material and conceptual exploration of the interplay between music and sculpture. His two oval-shaped objects with saw-toothed edges ‘MVET’ (1988) emerged during his two-year formative residency in Zurich and reference through their title the stringed musical instrument originating from central Africa.

‘Play’ introduces other sculptures that allude to musical instruments, such as the metallic drums and sticks in ‘Tambour et ses baguettes’ (2015) by Miriam Laura Leonardi; the squeezed trumpet, deprived of its original sonic function and recalling a memory of a brass band orchestra in ‘Low low, Lorraine aimless’ (2013) by Valentin Carron; or the handmade cymbal in ‘Crash’ (2014) by Vincent Kohler. The metallic sound is further evoked in the object resembling a funnel depicted in Pascal Danz’s painting ‘Der Geschichtenerzähler oder beinahe unendlich’ (1992).

Both images and music share the same elements of composition such as line, shape, rhythm or tone. These components find their form in the abstract visual works of Verena Loewensberg’s diptych ‘56.A+B’ (1983), René Gubelmann’s ‘Rhythmische Bewegung’ (1995) and Shirana Shahbazi’s ‘Komposition-48’ (2012).

The selection also includes works that are inspired by other forms of expression in the visual arts such as acting or performing. The motif of the clown is represented in artworks by Ugo Rondinone, Anton Bruhin and Carmen Perrin. In ‘Petite Lune’ (2017), Gilles Furtwängler explored the relationship between the spoken and the written word by capturing sentences on the canvas that he had heard in random places: advertising, through personal stories, conversations between people or in official speeches.