Moratón Projects in ‘EnCaja’ His Synesthetic Vision Through Animated Paintings

Moratón Projects in ‘EnCaja’ His Synesthetic Vision Through Animated Paintings

The artist illustrates the sounds he perceives in “3D spatial constructions”

M.M. – Santa Cruz de Tenerife

When he hears a sound, artist David Moratón sees colours. It’s due to the synesthesia he experiences — a hereditary neurological condition that makes him “see colours when he hears sounds or thinks in words.” For him, and now also for the audience attending his new exhibit, “hearing a cricket” is also visually perceiving a palette of images.

Moratón presents these synesthetic visions in paintings and photographs at the current exhibition EnCaja 2005: Arte actual en CajaCanarias (“Contemporary Art in CajaCanarias”), located in the old CajaCanarias art hall in La Laguna. The artist also screens videos he defines as “animated paintings,” which allow the viewer to perceive how “the painting I hear becomes something powerful enough to explain an instant through form and colour.”

In this context, he draws what he hears — or what he remembers hearing — in what he calls “3D spatial constructions”. “I project the sounds that exist within my memory, or those that most strongly affect me,” he says. The works displayed include digital animations and sequences inspired by insects, whale songs, and the first few seconds of the violin concerto by Jean Sibelius.

“My works aim to help people understand how deeply significant even the tiniest of sounds can be,” Moratón states. “In this exhibition, I try to make visible what I hear and feel from the inside, using the sense of sight to express my full emotional response to sound.”

La Opinion, Tenerife, Spain
28 September 2005
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