Oliver Beer and His “Cat Orchestra” Create Cosmic Paintings

In 1650, occult philosopher Athanasius Kircher conceived an instrument as peculiar as it was provocative: the Katzenklavier (or cat organ), where live cats, arranged by the pitch of their voices, would cry out in distress when the instrument’s keys struck their tails. This cruel instrument was first detailed by Kircher in his book Musurgia Universalis and later visualized in the 1883 French textbook La Nature, where seven cats in cages serve as the pipes for a piano.

The image of Katzenklavier in La Nature, on display near the entrance of Almine Rech in Tribeca, is the entry point to British artist Oliver Beer’s solo exhibition “Resonance Paintings — Cat Orchestra.” For the show, Beer (humanely) realized Kircher’s musical vision with his 2024 installation Cat Orchestra. Here, 37 hollow, cat-shaped vessels are transformed into a singular harmonious instrument. Each vessel, placed meticulously on a plinth and arranged similarly to a symphony orchestra, is connected to a keyboard via a highly sensitive microphone. This functions like a switchboard, activating the microphones to capture the nuanced sounds resonating within the vessels.

“The microphone turns on, and it feeds back at the exact note of that object,” Beer told Artsy while playing his Cat Orchestra. To achieve this harmony, Beer meticulously sourced a collection of cat vessels, each with a distinct timbre, enlisting friends, family, and colleagues on a global hunt. An absinthe pitcher, crafted to depict a cat playing the mandolin, resonates with an F sharp, while the Japanese maneki-neko figurine at the front of the orchestra emits a cheerful D note. “The fact that they are also singing feels so natural,” he added.

Cat Orchestra, pre-programmed to play various tunes, bathes the gallery space in ambient music, creating an immersive soundscape for visitors. Beyond the pre-set melodies, Beer’s exhibition also extends an open invitation to visitors. Until the exhibition closes on April 27th, guests can engage with the artwork by sitting at the keyboard to play music with the cat vessels.

Beer first developed his love for sound and music as a child. “I was always making drawings and visual art, but also had this uncanny sensitivity to harmony—I could hear what key the tunnels of the Tube in London were in, or I could hear a glass change key as you fill it up from a wine bottle,” Beer said. Before studying visual art at the University of Oxford, he focused on music composition at the Academy of Contemporary Music in London. Then, in 2015, the Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned the then-30-year-old artist to create an instrument from the museum’s collection—converging these two mediums. Here, he organized his first Vessel Orchestra (2019), finding 32 vessels to play in harmony.

“When you hear these things resonating, what’s happening is that there is a note that fits inside that vessel physically,” Beer said. “You throw a stone in a pond, and you see perfect concentric circles. Sound is really similar; if you could see the air around the vessel as it resonates, you would see amazing geometry resonating and coming out. It’s just that we hear that geometry rather than seeing it.”

Later, Beer began trying to visualize these sounds in 2020, embarking on his “Resonance Paintings” series. For these, he placed the canvas horizontally and put a speaker underneath, where he plays the notes from his cat vessels. The sound from these vessels vibrates the canvas, manipulating the ultra-fine pigment he gently deposits on top of it. Inspired by scientists like 17th-century physicist Robert Hooke, Beer has learned to play the cat vessels to achieve his intended visual result.

“Over the years, I’ve refined this process,” Beer said. “It’s not a science experiment where you show the movement of sound…but actually using the sound as a paintbrush to paint what I want to paint, not just what the sound may randomly create.”

His latest “Resonance Paintings” evoke the cosmos, showing blue and white ripples without any visible gestural movements. This is because these paintings move and settle simultaneously as Beer manipulates the volume of the speaker underneath the canvas. Once he places the ultra-fine pigment on the canvas, Beer never directly guides them with his hand. Instead, he uses the speaker and his vessels to control the vibrations and shift the paint on the canvas before it stains the canvas. For Beer, it is “a controlled geometry.” Though he initially worked in charcoal, Beer found inspiration in the blue and white porcelain ceramics he saw in Seoul, helping to convey new gradients and nuances.