Time to Face the Music

REM-04 is from the Remixed collection by Dutch collage artist Arthur Slenk (b. 1941). The collection was inspired by two boxes of antique handwritten sheet music purchased by the artist. Slenk found a certain beauty in the handwritten musical scores and after studying the pages in depth he noticed certain recurring effects, such as ink stains, fingerprints, foxing, and the varying pressure of the pen on paper. He then started cutting out these different elements and storing them in assorted jars. The cut bits and pieces were then used to assemble large collages. He spent the next seven years creating 144 pages of collages constructed from these selected bits. One of the designs contained only musical terms, another was composed only of foxing and other forms of staining. This design incorporates the noteheads of full and half notes with the musical stems omitted. The hi-res photography and digital printing beautifully capture the raw edges and layering of the cut bits of the paper, creating a wonderful trompe l’oeil effect. The slight variations in the shapes and coloring of the noteheads creates an elegant yet restrained over-all pattern, which when viewed from a distance somewhat resembles a leopard print. Like all of the wallpapers produced by NLXL this design is thirty feet long with no repeat.