Dieter Appelt

Dieter Appelt first became known in the 1970s through his photographs and films. Before his career as a visual artist, he had undergone musical training and for many years worked as a singer at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. His untitled drawings from 2006, which are part of the Schering Stiftung Collection, feature expressive and conspicuous lines drawn on top of more detailed grid drawings.

The sheets titled Score 10 (2006) and Score 2 (2010) show abstract, layered compositions executed with nib and ink, and a seemingly controlled structure beneath while the structure on top appears to be expressive and dynamic. The carefully conceived works with their various line designs form a kind of notation or sound field which, as their titles suggest, can be seen as scores. The works can be classified as visual sound images and translated into sounds. They are thus not to be understood as classic musical notation but as visual events engendering sound.

As a draftsman, Appelt is also interested in scientific processes. In his work Brownian Motion (2011), the artist’s line drawings take their cue from the irregular and jerky jiggling motions of the smallest particles in fluids and gases, which the botanist Robert Brown had described in 1827. Such physical regularities obviously hold major attraction for the artist, stimulating him to translate them into his own system that is likewise influenced by graphic rules.