exhibition statement: Neo Violet
AMARIE BERGMAN
All bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible: stars radiate visible light; planets and donkeys and couches radiate infrared waves.[1]
Violet, the highest resonating colour of the white light spectrum, seems to induce a sense of grace when seen in reality. However, objects actually do not have colour, they give off light that appears to be a colour.[2] Spectral power distributions occur in the physical world, but colours, much like sensations, exist only in the mind of the beholder.
Melding invisible violet and reductive art is a result of wondering how colour can be implied without being evident and by contemplating metaphysics and concepts of physics, particularly nuclear fusion, in what Jonah Lehrer calls the ‘cosmic conversation’ through making the scientific metaphors tangible.[3] Constructing forms with delicate materials, that look even more fragile when using multiples, intentionally borders them on immateriality.
Metaphysically, the seventh chakra, denoted by violet, exemplifies the interface between infrared waves and “an infinite grid of radiant energy-information-light…”[4]
This briefly described methodology of the exhibition project is unique. Above all, the work is reductive and beyond any familiar context or concept. Neo Violet was inspired by two tangential precedents that similarly incorporated the light of non-electrical whiteness: “To the Islands” series by Agnes Martin and Richard van der Aa’s “Mere Formalities.”
COMPONENTS:
ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN IS HEAVEN 1.
Constructed with seven long slender rods of Tasmanian oak, the double-pointed 2400 millimeter rods touch the floor on glossy black-painted tips while the upper tips are painted white which gradually etherealizes.
HALO
It is possible that no form conjures the crown chakra more quickly than a halo. The clear acrylic circle, 240mm in diameter, has seven attached ‘blossoms.’ Each blossom/sphere is made with seven double-folded cotton interfacing circles, approximately 80mm in diameter. This component, suspended from the ceiling using monofilament line, infers white light’s constant infrared rays through repetitions of circular geometry.
A SURPRISE OF VIOLETS
"…like a surprise of violets in a room, and you just a stranger who wandered in."[5]
A small hemispherical wall sculpture - made in two parts with silk and fabricated acrylic - localizes botanical violet through an almost undiscernible violet perfume,[6] an essence akin to grace and purity.
ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN IS HEAVEN 2
The meditative repetition of one line of text in Braille made with hand-written pencil dots refers, like Component I, to a quote by Saint Catherine of Sienna which Agnes Martin admired: “...all the way to heaven is heaven.”
[1] Amy Leach Things That Are (Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd. 2012) 144.
[2] The Physics Hypertext Book http://physics.info/color/
[3] Jonah Lehrer, Fourth Culture, The Future of Science...is Art?
https://openlabresearch.com/seedmagazine-com-the-future-of-scienceis-art
[4] Gregg Braden, Awakening to Zero Point, The Collective Initiation (Bellevue: Radio Bookstore Press, 1997) 102-103.
[5] Jalaluddin Rumi, Mathnawi III 4345-4374, Coleman Barks, trans. We Are Three (Athens: Maypop 1987) 81. (“violets” substituted for “roses”)
[6] Balenciaga Paris
Five Walls Projects, Melbourne
14 – 31 January 2015
http://fivewalls.com.au/amarie-bergman-neo-violet/
.