Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
"I like the idea of framing doors. I was drawn to the patterns, which are simple and bold, and which establish very different relationships along this 4x2 grid. There's symmetry, contrast, inversion, and reflection.
Bassist Kyle Motl and I have written and recorded a few miniature pieces to accompany these doors. The doors are already quite musical, in terms of their patterning and arrangement. We've written a couple of musical lines, which we then inverted, reflected, and contrasted. It's the aural analogue to the visual operation we see in this image."—Keir GoGwilt
Keir GoGwilt is a violinist, writer, and musicologist, whose work spans a range of critical and creative disciplines. As a violinist he has been described as a "formidable performer" (New York Times) noted for his "evocative sound" (London Jazz News), "keen musical intellect" (The Wire), and "finger-busting virtuosity" (San Diego Union Tribune). He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary performing arts company, AMOC, and he co-composes, improvises, and performs music with bassist Kyle Motl as part of their duo, Treesearch.
GoGwilt studied literature at Harvard University, where he was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, and is a PhD candidate in Music at UC San Diego. His research shows how methods of musical instrument instruction have shaped tenets of musical aesthetics usually attributed to 19th-century theorists and composers.
"Doors I" by Claudia Fernández is composed from a photographic archive of typologies of metal garage doors and fences widely used in middle-class domestic architecture throughout Mexico, Claudia Fernández's diptych, Doors I and II, remixes these urban samples into formal arrangements of geometric lines and shapes. Ordered into rigorous grids, the photographs self-consciously reference both the persistently flat picture-plane of Geometric Abstraction and Minimalism's strategic systematization. The photographs' value as sociological documentation is not, however, completely removed. The repeated doors and frames reveal at once a compulsive preoccupation with security and fortification, and the decisive influence of post-War Modernist architecture in Latin America.
"Doors I and II" were featured in Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions (2002) curated and organized by SDMA. Together with Eruption (2000) by Fernanda Brunet, these pieces were the first Latin American acquisitions made with the Suzanne Figi Latin American and Contemporary Art Fund established in 2000. Their purchase marked a renewed commitment to Mexican contemporary art as one of the acquisition priorities for SDMA's contemporary collection.
Virtual SDMA+ Art of Elan is a series of short online experiences pairing The San Diego Museum of Art permanent collection with the thoughtfully curated music of Art of Elan. Building on the 13-year partnership between the two arts organizations, the video series features short musical responses to works of art that are meant to inspire and uplift the community. Art of Elan has chosen six prestigious musicians to kick off the series.
Virtual SDMA+ Art of Elan online concerts will be shared on Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m. PT on SDMA YouTube.
August 4 – Rose Lombardo, flute – Las Tres Virgenes Volcano at Sunset by Eliot Furness Porter (1966)
August 18 – Stephanie Richards, trumpet – Circle, Blue-Violet by DeWain Valentine (1978)
Claudia Fernández. "Doors I," 1998 (published 2001). Digital color photograph on paper mounted on metal. Gift of the Suzanne Figi Latin American and Contemporary Art Fund. 2001.3.
SDMArt.org/virtual-sdma-plus & ArtOfElan.org
"I like the idea of framing doors. I was drawn to the patterns, which are simple and bold, and which establish very different relationships along this 4x2 grid. There's symmetry, contrast, inversion, and reflection.
Bassist Kyle Motl and I have written and recorded a few miniature pieces to accompany these doors. The doors are already quite musical, in terms of their patterning and arrangement. We've written a couple of musical lines, which we then inverted, reflected, and contrasted. It's the aural analogue to the visual operation we see in this image."—Keir GoGwilt
Keir GoGwilt is a violinist, writer, and musicologist, whose work spans a range of critical and creative disciplines. As a violinist he has been described as a "formidable performer" (New York Times) noted for his "evocative sound" (London Jazz News), "keen musical intellect" (The Wire), and "finger-busting virtuosity" (San Diego Union Tribune). He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary performing arts company, AMOC, and he co-composes, improvises, and performs music with bassist Kyle Motl as part of their duo, Treesearch.
GoGwilt studied literature at Harvard University, where he was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, and is a PhD candidate in Music at UC San Diego. His research shows how methods of musical instrument instruction have shaped tenets of musical aesthetics usually attributed to 19th-century theorists and composers.
"Doors I" by Claudia Fernández is composed from a photographic archive of typologies of metal garage doors and fences widely used in middle-class domestic architecture throughout Mexico, Claudia Fernández's diptych, Doors I and II, remixes these urban samples into formal arrangements of geometric lines and shapes. Ordered into rigorous grids, the photographs self-consciously reference both the persistently flat picture-plane of Geometric Abstraction and Minimalism's strategic systematization. The photographs' value as sociological documentation is not, however, completely removed. The repeated doors and frames reveal at once a compulsive preoccupation with security and fortification, and the decisive influence of post-War Modernist architecture in Latin America.
"Doors I and II" were featured in Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions (2002) curated and organized by SDMA. Together with Eruption (2000) by Fernanda Brunet, these pieces were the first Latin American acquisitions made with the Suzanne Figi Latin American and Contemporary Art Fund established in 2000. Their purchase marked a renewed commitment to Mexican contemporary art as one of the acquisition priorities for SDMA's contemporary collection.
Virtual SDMA+ Art of Elan is a series of short online experiences pairing The San Diego Museum of Art permanent collection with the thoughtfully curated music of Art of Elan. Building on the 13-year partnership between the two arts organizations, the video series features short musical responses to works of art that are meant to inspire and uplift the community. Art of Elan has chosen six prestigious musicians to kick off the series.
Virtual SDMA+ Art of Elan online concerts will be shared on Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m. PT on SDMA YouTube.
August 4 – Rose Lombardo, flute – Las Tres Virgenes Volcano at Sunset by Eliot Furness Porter (1966)
August 18 – Stephanie Richards, trumpet – Circle, Blue-Violet by DeWain Valentine (1978)
Claudia Fernández. "Doors I," 1998 (published 2001). Digital color photograph on paper mounted on metal. Gift of the Suzanne Figi Latin American and Contemporary Art Fund. 2001.3.
SDMArt.org/virtual-sdma-plus & ArtOfElan.org
