Alice Pelot
Raven Row: 56 Artillery Lane, London, E1 7LS
Raven Row: 56 Artillery Lane, London, E1 7LS
East end gallery Raven Row on Artillery Lane has just ended their exhibition Real Capital - Production of German artist KP Brehmer's works from the 60's. Aside from encouraging people to make Raven Row a regular item on art-centric itineraries, I would like to acknowledge Brehmer's deep appreciation of colour. Quoted in the exhibition's accompanying text, Brehmer stresses the importance of colour to his practice.
" I AM ONLY INTERESTED IN THE COLOURS AND WHAT THE BEHOLDER DOES WITH THEM[...] THERE ARE VARIOUS COLOURS ON OFFER [...] AND I AM INTERESTED IN WHICH LANDSCAPE THE BEHOLDER COMPOSES FROM THEM, WHETHER HE USES THESE COLOURS AT ALL AND MAKES HIS OWN IDEAL LANDSCAPE FROM THEM."
- KP BREHMER
Most likely, the following has occurred or will occur to everyone: 'Are colour frequencies an exact universal experience? Does your ocean look more like an endless, breathing lawn, or is it more the shade of Van Gogh's violet Irises? Is there a reason behind some people's terrible sense of colour coordination? My red may be her purple, and her purple his yellow.'
How then, is it possible that we use colours to create order? It is by the names and order we give the colours, and theories belonging to the long lived, scientifically established colour wheel. From the colour wheel, there are agreed upon primary colours, secondary and tertiary colours, and complementary or harmonious colours, learned at a young age in a rainbow format.
Colours signify action, for instance green is go and red is stop. Colours also help codify choices, like the blue caps on the whole milk versus the green caps on the semi-skimmed. More subjectively, colours are also used to illustrate emotions such as 'positively puce with frustration', 'true blue', 'tickled pink', yellow bellied', or 'green with envy' to name a few. And it becomes more complicated when colour is associated with moral codes whereby people 'go green', belong to a left-wing 'Red Army' (a colour also associated with the US Republican Party); or when colour is used for categorization just as white has been associated with goodness and black with evil.
There is no doubt that the many learned associations with colour affect viewing the abstracted colour systems often found in modern and contemporary art. But we also cull colours for emotional power beyond their uses as emotional metaphors. There is a dichotomy of colour. Some colours create the distinct feeling of cool or warm, or (as Goethe expressed in his colour theories) as light and dark.
The personal, political and societal connections to colour are demanded of Brehmer's works at Raven Row. Shown in the cozy homes at Raven Row, each room is given a different theme or context in which to read the colours: political and natural geographies, economics, popular culture, and finally mood. Recognizing maps and pop icons directs 'the landscapes' we make from colours, but some of Brehmer's graph based works are accompanied by German text. As a non-German speaker the script in his works does not provide any indication of his colour systems and I am left to interpret the colours as they are in relation to each other like the colour theories of George Seurat for his pointillist works.
K. P. Brehmer is not the first artist to consider the potentially emotional subjective experience of colour, providing systems and theories to explore abstraction. Painters from JMW Turner to Kandinsky to contemporary painter Katy Moran have produced vivid spectrums of space in which we can freely explore our personal and intimate connections to colour. While viewing abstract paintings, it would be a beneficial mantra to remember - as is expressed so poetically by Brehmer - abstract paintings are offerings of colour.
How then, is it possible that we use colours to create order? It is by the names and order we give the colours, and theories belonging to the long lived, scientifically established colour wheel. From the colour wheel, there are agreed upon primary colours, secondary and tertiary colours, and complementary or harmonious colours, learned at a young age in a rainbow format.
Colours signify action, for instance green is go and red is stop. Colours also help codify choices, like the blue caps on the whole milk versus the green caps on the semi-skimmed. More subjectively, colours are also used to illustrate emotions such as 'positively puce with frustration', 'true blue', 'tickled pink', yellow bellied', or 'green with envy' to name a few. And it becomes more complicated when colour is associated with moral codes whereby people 'go green', belong to a left-wing 'Red Army' (a colour also associated with the US Republican Party); or when colour is used for categorization just as white has been associated with goodness and black with evil.
There is no doubt that the many learned associations with colour affect viewing the abstracted colour systems often found in modern and contemporary art. But we also cull colours for emotional power beyond their uses as emotional metaphors. There is a dichotomy of colour. Some colours create the distinct feeling of cool or warm, or (as Goethe expressed in his colour theories) as light and dark.
The personal, political and societal connections to colour are demanded of Brehmer's works at Raven Row. Shown in the cozy homes at Raven Row, each room is given a different theme or context in which to read the colours: political and natural geographies, economics, popular culture, and finally mood. Recognizing maps and pop icons directs 'the landscapes' we make from colours, but some of Brehmer's graph based works are accompanied by German text. As a non-German speaker the script in his works does not provide any indication of his colour systems and I am left to interpret the colours as they are in relation to each other like the colour theories of George Seurat for his pointillist works.
K. P. Brehmer is not the first artist to consider the potentially emotional subjective experience of colour, providing systems and theories to explore abstraction. Painters from JMW Turner to Kandinsky to contemporary painter Katy Moran have produced vivid spectrums of space in which we can freely explore our personal and intimate connections to colour. While viewing abstract paintings, it would be a beneficial mantra to remember - as is expressed so poetically by Brehmer - abstract paintings are offerings of colour.