What does a painter, who is also a music fanatic, do to add a touch of melody to his canvas? Gregor Hildebrandt, whose exhibition titled These Flowers Will Never Die will be exhibited in Mumbai, has found the answer. The German artist makes great use of pre-recorded cassette tapes as material in his works. Hildebrandt records the song on a cassette and then cuts the tape into strips. He then glues these strips onto the canvas. “I developed this technique during my studies in Mainz, while working on an artist book. I would first record the song on cassettes and then, in the studio, I would glue it onto the pages. I am interested in this transformation of a song recorded on a small cassette to a large black gestural canvas,” explains Hildebrandt, who is fascinated by the intangibility of music. “The fact that it cannot be presented to the eye, lends a certain mystery to the cassette tape,” says the artist, whose works are titled according to the song recorded on the tape. Paintings on display include Blood Flowers by the band The Cure. 

Gregor Hildebrandt