Last year in Rodez, southern France, 95-year-old French artist Pierre Soulages was honored with the opening of a rust-adorned museum in his name. Celebrated for an unconventional approach to painting using only black paint, the oft-namedropped nonagenarian artist manipulates the spectrum of light bouncing off the surfaces of his works, in turn conceiving a new shade of his own, outrenoir (meaning: “beyond black”).

Inspired by this abstract oeuvre, the New York-based visual artist and director Jonathan Turner creates an ode to Soulages, conceiving a hallucinogenic digital world that is scored by the maniacal beats of Dutch E. Germ. “I remember Soulages talked about ‘depicting an architecture that you don't see,’” says Turner a member of art collective Yemenwed and solo artist recognized for his warped collaborations across music (Glasser), fashion (Telfar) and art (Tauba Auerbach). 

Turner took Soulages’ process of using light as his primary medium, and ran with it: “I thought about architecture where there is no diffuse light, only specular light, which can only be seen at the angle of reflection with the eye. So, like Soulages, I would have to create an environment for receiving light as opposed to creating a space and then illuminating it diffusely.” 

What’s the term for this format of film? 
Jonathan Turner: I guess you could file it under ‘animation’ but I don't really see it that way. In an ideal world I would recreate everything with physical sets or environments. This piece is almost more like photography because I'm dealing with the scientific physical properties of reality as opposed to a more stylized traditional abstraction of life through animation. 

The film takes us through various spaces, did anywhere real act as inspiration?
JT: Growing up I was always struck by the vastness and all the negative space in shopping malls. There was a mall aesthetic in the 1970s that was actually very refined and almost brutalist. It made use of travertine marble and sunken conversation pits that were surrounded by water features and dotted with grotesque iron sculptures. There would aways be some corner of the mall that was neglected and almost abandoned in feeling. Las Vegas Casinos carry on the tradition. 

The film is soundtracked by Dutch E Germ. How do you think the track effects the tone of the film? 
JT: It exuded this pent-up dark energy. It certainly made the piece darker and more specific. Before I was thinking something more ambient, sublime and abstract. In the beginning of the song there are these sounds that remind me of electric live wires, so light sort of transformed from just illumination to something more like energy or plasma. Tim [de Witt, aka Dutch E Germ] and I work together on projects regularly, we’ve had a long-running dialog that rubbed off on the piece.

Coming soon to NOWNESS: Pierre Soulages in conversation.