Tashi Wada

In addition to composing incredible music, Tashi Wada draws using a typewriter. Wada's music can be hypnotic, inviting the kind of contemplation that is too often reserved for quasi-religious experiences. But it also has a certain dryness that brings you into the present rather than pushing you away from it. Wada's typewriter works use simple patterns and mechanical repetition to achieve something similar. They aren't meditative, exactly, but like an Agnes Martin painting or certain drawings by Eva Hesse, their minimalism demands an intensity of focus. And because their repetitiveness induces optical illusions, they exist between the eye and the page. Just as the alternative tunings that Wada uses in his music can produce tones that aren't actually being played as a result of the combination of certain tones that are played, Wada's drawings create visual tensions, coloration and movement between the marks. The work itself consists of the effect of these marks upon us. Even so, they aren't psychedelic; instead of seeking to alter consciousness, there is a frank recognition that perception is the basis of any work of art.