Lewis deSoto: Recital

Lewis deSoto’s installation, Recital, 1998, was a poignant tribute to a marriage. Through an innovative use of technology, deSoto sensitively fused the distinct talents of Dr. Hideomi Tuge, a brain pathologist, and Dr. Tuge’s wife, Chiyo, a composer and pianist. The inspiration for Recital came to deSoto by the chance discovery of a book by Dr. Tuge entitled The Atlas of the Brain of a Pianist, which is a posthumous mapping of Chiyo Tuge’s brain by Dr. Tuge. For the installation, a grand piano was placed in a stage-like setting in front of a theater curtain. Despite the absence of a pianist, eerie strains of Chiyo’s music flowed from the piano, conveying a powerful sense of loss. Dr. Tuge’s atlas is in place where sheet music normally would have been, its pages turned by an automatic page-turner. deSoto stated, “While the book projects sensibilities that are commonly labeled scientific and objective, the relationship between husband and wife, devotion and loss, science and art are implicated as the installation connects the image of the brain (creativity) with the experience of the music (memory).” A brochure documenting deSoto’s Fall 1998 installation Recital with an essay by exhibition curator Jennifer L. Riddell.