The Noh mixes are a three-part soundscape series featuring raw and unaltered audio recordings from various Noh Theatre performances that were then layered with contemporary ambient music—alluding to the mysterious terra firma (as well as incognita) of Charles Munka’s paintings. These sounds function as sensory cues as he works in the studio and visits the spaces that inspire his process, ultimately manifesting as etherealaccompaniments that reflect the terrain where past, present, and future coalesce.

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For the past seven years Munka has lived and worked on Sadogashima, a remote island off the west coast of Japan. Isolated locales are often charged with strange, hidden forces, and the landscape there is haunted by ghosts of the past—a mysterious, shifting world, a space of sanctuary and shelter as well as abandonment and exile (Sado’s population has fallen significantly over the decades as residents have moved to the city, often leaving behind their homes and possessions). And every winter, on its remote beaches, North Korean ships run aground, their broken hulls discarded like the carcasses of mythical sea creatures.

More importantly, Sadogashima is an epicentre of Noh theatre culture, and it is here that many of the last remaining wooden Noh stages in Japan can be found (there are around thirty). Most have fallen into disrepair and obsolescence; others have been maintained and continue to host annual performances. Munka, as a modern-day mental traveller, flâneur, or stalker, researches and documents these spaces before translating them onto the plane of the canvas using graphic symbols and notation systems directly related to traditional Noh performances—specifically the movement of performers on the stage. These paintings are thus subtly embedded with the island’s rich cultural identity and pay homage to the physical environment in which they exist. As a form of artistic dialogue, he has installed his works in dormant Noh stages as a way of drawing a direct line between ancient theatrical traditions and contemporary painting techniques