How We See: The Materiality of Color

We can understand color in an approximate sequence of Newton’s spectrum: dark red, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, dark blue, violet. From a distance this distinction of colors shimmers like a rainbow if made from light or is solid like a candy if made from an opaque material. Spread out across a floor or composed in quadrants on a canvas or isolated in so many individual items, color is not a self-contained sculptural object. Its experience invites comparison with epistemological and metaphysical speculation. 

We know what a color does to excite us but it is hard to tell what it is. Why do we even perceive it? These sculptor’s colored materials, however, are the product of modern technology in material sciences like biology, chemistry and physics. Their very choice, transferred and arranged for a museum context, does more than show that the artist’s creations have beauty, but rather suggests that the artist’s production of endless color variations is not unlike nature’s manner of reproduction.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website