Beginning in July 2005, several Washington museums are engaged in a year-long survey of this Seattle Artist's work, with installations and/or performances will occurring at the Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington, Consolidated Works, the Frye Art Museum and Suyama Space in Seattle; the Museum of Glass in Tacoma; the Washington State University Museum of Art (Pullman); and, across the border, at the Vancouver Jazz Festival in Vancouver, Canada. Suyama Space, the contemporary, site-specific installation space located at 2324 2nd Avenue in Seattle, Washington is featuring a new work by Trimpin.  Gallery hours are Monday  Friday, 9 a.m.  5 p.m. and admission is free to the public.

Trimpin, a German-born composer and inventor has lived in Seattle since moving to Seattle from Germany in 1979.  He is an experimenter in musical, acoustical, and sound sculpture design, combining music composition, kinetics with computer technology.  He creates musical artworks that produce sound, but with equal felicity as a sculptor, musician, composer and inventor.  Trimpin has presented artist residencies, performances, site-specific sound installations, and collaborations throughout the world, but seldom had been seen in Seattle until 2005 when eleven arts institutions in the Northwest embarked upon a two-year-long series of individual exhibitions featuring the genius of his work.  Besides Suyama Space, presenting institutions include the Henry Art Museum, Consolidated Works, Museum of Glass, Jack Straw Productions, Washington State University Museum of Art, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, The Frye Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum at SAAM, Tacoma Art Museum, and the Missoula Art Museum.

In 1997, Trimpin received a MacArthur Foundation Genius  Award for his extraordinary talent.  He received a Masters in Sozial Padagogik (art and music), from Berlin University in 1979, and served as a faculty member for the Electronic Music Studio of Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, 1985-87.  Trimpin is featured in an in-depth special in The New Yorker, written by Jean Strouse in the latest issue.

SHHH features a rotating hand-formed sphere that orbits rhythmically on a floating 18-foot diameter metal ring, producing a layering of sound caused from rotations increasing or decreasing in velocity when a viewer is in close proximity to the piece.  A cable/pulley configuration moves the floating ring in a sequenced x-y coordinate, propelling the sphere in any direction, fast or slow as it hovers at the viewers  eye level.  In concept, SHHH relates to the major commission piece Trimpin completed last fall for the Zaha Hadid designed Phaeno Science Center. located in Wolfsberg, Germany.
          Funding for the Suyama Space installation and publication was provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, 4Culture Sustained Support, Washington State Arts Commission, Suyama Space Gallery Friends and was curated by Beth Sellars in partnership with Space.City.

If Rube Goldberg and Ad Reinhardt had a love child it would be Trimpin. He combines the whimsey of the former with the compositional structure of the latter to create wacky optical visions of perpetual time and space. The circular movement of the balls has a hypnotic effect of the viewer following the ball around an endless circuit. The critical reaction so far has been limited to the counter-culture bias of The Stranger.

 Critical Reaction
"As a composer who reimagines and invents traditional instruments (pipe organ, marimba, electric guitar), Trimpin is a spiritual descendent of American mavericks Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Conlon Nancarrow, Henry Brant, and Harry Partch."Chris DeLaurenti The Stranger

"Trimpin's latest installation is, as I've said of his earlier pieces, a technological accomplishment but, as an art object, I have a hard time relating to it. There's no point of entry, no way to form a human relationship with the work. SHHH is just an enormous and somewhat ominous object undulating in the middle of a room making the noise that it's name onomatopoetically suggests. In other words, it doesn't shift or heighten my experience of the world." Carrie E.A. Scott The Stranger

Of course Carrie E.A. Scott's ignorance of local Art History is very apparent when you consider the works of local artists like Mark Zirple, and Dan Web. The fascination with machinery might have something to do with the fact that Boeing in in the area, and Trimpin does use recycled parts from larger mechanisms. If I were the arts editor at that Seattle alt weekly newspaper, I would send the art critic to do a proper review and relegate the sophomoric ranting to the Slog [The Stranger's Web log]. Ignore the philistines and go see this amazing piece!

See the video here.