In the middle of the...light

Colour & Light Journal Exercise

1) Visit the FIGURING LIGHT, Colour and The Intangible Exhibition at Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside. Choose a piece of work and write 200 words about the artist use of colour and light .
2) Take two photographs based on a theme of your choice. Using Photoshop change and replace the colours to express complementary pairs of colours. Explain your choice of colours.

I`ve always had a hard time choosing a single item, so I think the best way to present the ideas that this exhibition has awakened in my mind would be by discussing two works.


The first one is Jane Bustin`s Glory, a work that combines two different surfaces, wood and silk.




Eerily enough, I found some of the ideas that came through my mind similar to those in the introduction written by Dr Richard Davey in the Figuring Light.Colour and the Intangible exhibition copy. Mainly, considering the above work, the importance of texture and surface in the way we perceive colour. I made some on-site experiments too, trying to view the work from several different angles or concentrating on each half separately and then seeing how the colour that my mind has absorbed over a period of time interacts with the other. Also, what struck me was the way in which surface and its interaction with light can alter the value of colour. I`m not only talking about intensity, how shiny or provocative red can be on a shiny surface compared to a more matter one, but also to the further associations in our mind: matte red might bring about images of velvet and luscious materials, but it is always a more static red, and given the immediate association of red with blood and thus vitality, it is a museum red, a venerable relic that commands awe and stasis. Compare that to red on a shiny, smooth, playful surface...movement, to the point of disturbance, life reduced to its essence: change, flow and conscience.

Another intriguing aspect of Bustin`s works is the refusal of form and of narrative. Having talked with one of my friends not long ago about the importance of symbols and narratives to people throughout history, it occured to me how risqué this exhaltation of colour without its submission to form really is. And it was confirmed by another friend that has accompanied me to the exhibition. The relationship of colour and form is similar to that of image and music. Nietszche already cried out of the blatant hostility towards music when it came without a narrative or even a random association of colours and images and Davey makes the same point about colour and form. Because symbols and narratives are so important, most of our ways of being in the world revolve around cause and effect coordinates. Ignoring this vital need for symbol is a sacrilege to the mind, and thus it is most likely that one will express refusal. After all, as one of Marquis de Sade`s characters saids, `I cannot love what I do not understad`. This often translates into `I cannot love what i cannot use`(to explain things, to fit into my world view, to generate answers)...instrumentality towards everything, denying any merit to the mere existence of something as being an object of wonder and contemplation.


The second work that caught my attention was Richard Kenton Webb`s Spectral Red Light.




Webb mixes his own colours, trying to witness the `birth` of colour, instead of taking it for granted in its final form, and merely using it as a subservient of form, line and narrative. He also raises question about the ability to perceive colour, to realise difference. I found this idea of a certain `education`(I mean that in a figurative way, encompassing experience, culture, etc) one has to have to recognise colour very much like Adolf Loos` idea of the `birth`of the colour purple in his essay, Ornament and Crime. Also, we are accostumed to obtain depth by contrast, preferably sharp ones, and black and grey are absolute favourites when it comes to creating depth. Yet, as Webb demonstrates, similarity, minimal difference can also create new spaces.




Now, for my photos...




This photo was taken on a beautiful sunny morning, yet the feeling I wanted to convey was of cloudy, rainy day, and as Verlaine would have it `ils pleur dans mon coeur`. In order to do this, I replaced the predominantly warm colours (my hair colour, my T-shirt) and altered the brightness. I used greish-blue to create the atmosphere of a rainy day and used the streams of light on my face to now suggest rain streaming down the window, reflected on my face. All this combined with a rather sad expression also makes one think of tears...rain, tears, gloomy colours...the ingredients for a rainy day. And why orange? Well, orange is a rather puzzling colour for me in itself. Born at the point where red meets yellow, the colour of vitality and passion meets the colour that is associated with envy and sickness, orange is a living paradox. It is a fruit yet it is also a colour of insanity and hysteria. It is caught in between the whirlpool of contradicting feelings, almost like a battleground of two colours that bring up in us such contrasting feelings. Hence, given the nature of this picture, where light has given way to gloom, warmth to coolness, the choice of orange and blue seemed like the most appropriate idea.

Green and purple...I remember having at one time a schoolbag that combined these two colours and I`m still wondering how these two cool colours manage to give such a pleasing combination. I might be extremely subjective here, but I just see them in a harmonious relationship. There seems to be little tension between them, although one is a colour we associate with nature and freshness, while the other is probably one that is most suggestive of artifice and decadence. Yet, their co-existence is exemplary. Green tames the extravagance of purple, while purple adds a dash of flamboyance to an otherwise pastoral colour. Considering the excessess that we as humans are inclined towards it is a marvelous example of balance between different values: the purity of the simple form, its freshness and the exquisite nature of the highly refined, abstract.