Sunday 20 May 2012

Point of Entry

^Soto, Jesús Rafael, Blue Penetrable BBL. Photograph by Author, at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC


Click the ISSUU link below for a post by Corbin Keech on the exhibition Suprasensorial.


"Created between the late 50’s and mid-70’s the pieces accurately reflect a tumultuous period of global change in both society and design, where upheaval and destabilization were the norm. More specifically, they reveal color’s innate functionality as a reference tool and container of meaning. Their collective message is equally poignant today - dehumanized cities must be reconsidered, the public is worthy of meaningful communal experiences, and color is an agile and powerful tool in the effort to stitch together society’s disparate components."


Monday 7 May 2012

Associations

^Azzurra by Nathalie du Pasquier, april 2012, photo by Alice Fiorilli



To talk about colours we have to name them and to name them we have to use names of things which have that colour. It is the evocations the names bring to our mind that make us imagine them.

Listen to these: emerald green, moss, sap green, veronese, eau de Nil, almond green, olive green, pine green, bottle green…and then Naples yellow, tired green, green with envy, caput mortum, ivory black, ultramarine, aile de corbeau (another black with a blue reflect like on the wing of a black bird), Indian yellow, gorge de pigeon.

A blue guitar, the red square, Dingo yellow dog Dingo, the black sea, blue mountains, la place rouge était blanche, the black square of Malevitch, the red apple Snow White ate and then she died, a black cat, the red cape of the toreador, bloody Mary and Blanche de Castille.

“Colours are life”, they don’t exist without light, and they would not exist without these wonderful instruments, the eyes. They say the eye can distinguish 30.000 different colours. I don’t really believe it, too many, far too many, this is an abstract scientific possibility, maybe not a conscious real one, I could never remember all these colours, just maybe notice the tiny variations between them on a chart and then forget them, but this scientific declaration is the proof there are many colours!

Is poetry a science or is it just a brief moment in which the poet and the reader meet around a combination of words, open an unexpected door to unknown perceptions? Can we plan poetry?  Maybe we can just work on it, concentrating the most personal and mysterious aspects of our mind around an idea that is impossible to define, it will find its definition in the poem itself and in no other way. For colours maybe it is the same. Of course there are rules about harmony and one can follow them and achieve a pleasant result, but -deeply- colours are a very personal sense because they involve, like all things relating to so called “sensibility”, a myriad of physical, intellectual and emotional connections.

Pompeian red: you are taken to a roman villa where lying men dressed in white peplum are served by young Egyptian slaves elaborated dishes, animals stuffed with animals stuffed with other animals, from the big ones to the small ones, and there is marble on the floor, outside the Mediterranean is blue but the walls of the room are red. That is all you see in a fraction when you hear Pompeian red.

The way we found to describe a colour is to associate it with something which has the same colour, if we don’t know that thing we don’t imagine the colour, if we have never heard of Pompei we shall have a very different idea of Pompeian red even if we probably could also name it with a number corresponding to a scale of reds. To name a colour is to remember something we have seen, to connect sensations. Indian red, vermillion, carmine, cardinal, geranium, strawberry, cherry, brick, a packet of Marlboro, rosso bandiera, bandiera rossa…rosa Tiepolo.




post by Nathalie Du Pasquier, an artist practising in Milan. Before moving into fine art, she was a leading designer of the Memphis Group

Saturday 5 May 2012

Saturated Space II: Materials, Light & Atmosphere

Saturated Space just concluded its second event (itinerary above), a series of trips and visits around Venice, and a symposium with the PHD program of the University of Venice's Architecture department. Some images below. For a full photo diary please visit our facebook page over at http://www.facebook.com/saturatedspace
Window sill in the Orsoni Workshop. Photo by Lucy Moroney
Pile of offcuts in the refuse area of the Orsoni Workshop
Bottom of a broken kiln pot, where excess material falls, and is collected, during heating
Glass mosaic terazzo floors in the Olivetti showroom
Matte Rose, and reflective grey venetian plaster by deLuigi, Azure blue painted panels, dark Teak, and Bronze details in the Olivetti showroom
Glass mosaic terazzo floors in the Olivetti showroom
Symposium with the Architecture PHD program at IUAV about the Authenticity and Theatricality of Colour in Architecture
Painted cast concrete at the Brion Cemetery
Coloured, gold leaf mosaics on the ceiling of the mausoleum at the Brion Cemetery. Photo by Lucy Moroney
Iridescent tiles at the Brion Cemetery. Photo by Lucy Moroney
Deep blue polished plaster on the interior of the family tomb at the Brion Cemetery
Marble floor tiles in the Querini Stampalia