Lode Laperre

It is hardly surprising that visual art aligns so closely with music: light and sound both come to us in frequencies; more than matter itself, they are vibrations that shape our universe. Even on a subatomic level, physics describes observations as waves and fields, fluctuating along Schrödinger’s probability waves. In this intangible chaos, humankind continually seeks a coherent story, structure, and predictability.

Lode and his wife Véronique met cellist Shih-Lin Chen during an exhibition in Taipei, and that brief encounter was swiftly followed by a spontaneous invitation to Chen’s home. Although their schedule was packed and their return trip imminent, such unexpected opportunities are not to be missed, and that same evening, Chen spoke about his interpretation of Bach’s six cello suites.

The origin of Bach’s suites remains shrouded in mystery: he most likely wrote them around 1720 during his stay in Köthen, but there are neither letters nor notes, and even the original manuscript is missing. We know the suites only through copies, of which the one by Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena is the most well-known. Each suite consists of a prelude and a series of stylized dances and through these, Bach demonstrated that the cello was not merely a complementary, but also a fully independent solo instrument. The works were largely forgotten until Pablo Casals rediscovered them in the early 20th century. Since then, they have become a cornerstone and pinnacle of the cello repertoire.

That evening, Lode and Chen talked at length about this music and, uncannily, those very same Bach suites played on the radio during their taxi ride back to the hotel - a moment when human connections suddenly seem to anchor themselves, like entangled particles in what Brian Greene calls an “elegant, symmetrical universe.”

Fueled by lengthy exchanges about art and music, and reinforced by Lode’s long-held interest in Eastern mysticism and art - a passion he expresses not only in ideas but also in a carefully curated collection of artifacts -, a friendship soon developed out of that initial conversation. Time and again, Chen returned to the cyclic structure of the suites, the inescapable rhythm that he saw as a metaphor for life itself. For him, the six parts represent consecutive stages of life, continuous in their cohesion yet each colored by subtle and sometimes dramatic variations. First comes birth, then - viewed later with reflective nostalgia – youth, and next adolescence: purposeful, bold, confidently striding into the future. After that, adulthood, marked by mastery and self-awareness. The penultimate phase, suffering and death, is no anticlimax - no valley where everything ends - but rather a passageway: a path toward the afterlife or the possibility of rebirth. Seen as a whole, one recognizes the melancholic serenity Lamartine once described as follows: “Pourtant le soir qui tombe a des langueurs sereines | Que la fin donne à tout, aux bonheurs comme aux peines.” (Yet the falling evening has a serene languor | That the end bestows on all things, on joys as on sorrows.)

Over time, Lode entertained the idea of translating this interpretation into images - consciously and intentionally, contrary to his usual modus operandi. Six panels for six suites: simple in concept, yet complex in execution. How does one depict the whirlpool of experiences, insights, and transformations that unfold between birth and death? He sought parallels and synchronicities that are barely discernible in the work but make up its underlying structure.

Inevitably, personal memories seeped into the process. With the fifth panel, which in Chen’s interpretation symbolizes suffering, Lode recalled conversations with Etienne Vermeersch, for whom suffering was not an isolated instant but a chain of consciously experienced moments stretched through time - where memory and uncertainty form the very essence. For the final panel, depicting the dissolution into nonexistence, Lode deliberately painted a horizon, both as a boundary and as a new beginning. In the arrangement of the six panels as a mosaic, that horizon continues from one panel to the next, as though the divide between life and death were constantly re-enacted. Placed side by side, the same motif appears not as interruption but as a natural continuation. Life thus becomes a construction set, with its meaning shifting depending on the perspective from which we view it.

Throughout his work, Lode regularly updated Chen on his progress. Their conversations helped him break through hesitations and crystallize his ideas. Meanwhile, Chen’s own long-cherished project began to take shape too: to present all six suites in a single, uninterrupted, performance. This feat demands exceptional concentration, physical strength, and mental fortitude and, as such, few have dared to attempt it. Though Chen had toyed with the idea for years, the completion of Lode’s work seemed to give him the confidence that the endeavor could have a successful conclusion.

Is it coincidence that both projects took shape at the same time? Probably not. Their simultaneous development provided a path from the abstract to the tangible, from idea to form. Each mirrors the other, deriving meaning from their proximity, revealing their true essence only in symbiosis. Lode’s pictorial work will accompany Chen not only symbolically, but also literally, during his preparation and eventual performance of the suites.

Perhaps this is the essence of their interplay: that there exists a field where music and image touch - where frequencies intersect and probability waves overlap. Not a domain that lets itself be analyzed rationally, but one that can be experienced through artistic intuition - where sound and color, string and brushstroke, truly meet.

(published in TheArtCouch magazine  -  English translation: Joris Laperre)