Eva-Maria Bolz, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Andy Holtin
Opening:
31.05.2013, 8 PM
Exhibition runs 1 June - 21 July, 2013
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment
Exhibition runs 1 June - 21 July, 2013
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment
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| Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Why Is Green a Red Word?, video stills, 2003 - 2013 |
Since 2003, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, herself a synaesthete, has created an extensive video archive of interviews about the multi-sensory perception of synaesthesia that document the experiences of individuals and at the same time make the unbridgeable gap between this topic and the audience clear.
Her project Why Is Green a Red Word? is comprised of interviews with synaesthetes and scientists, but also includes conceptual video works such as What the Hell does Purgatory Look Like? and drawings depicting the spatial imagination of number forms by different synaesthetes. Contemporaneous with the exhibition opening will be the publication of Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen’s artist book Why is Green a Red Word? designed by Kenan Darwich.
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| Eva-Maria Bolz, Der Innere Monitor (The Rose and the Nightingale, Oscar Wilde), 2013, detail |
The work of the Berlin artist and grapheme synaesthete Eva-Maria Bolz is dedicated to an exploration of the relationship between colour, text and perception. In her individual form of synaesthesia she feels an unchanging association of colours to numbers, letters, as well as whole words. Perception becomes a filter through which letters, words – text in itself – are translated into colours and transformed from a set of well-known characters into a message that can be detected by means of a particular synaesthetic sensibility.
The project Der Innere Monitor, which Eva-Maria Bolz presents at Art Laboratory Berlin, follows her perception that colours and letters form a specific code through which a text can be translated into blocks of colour. Each letter corresponds to a specific colour. When the artist deliberately uses texts that contain intense colour descriptions such as Oscar Wilde's The Rose and the Nightingale, she asks us not only to explore the perceived differences, but also to experience the text through the eyes of a synaesthete. In the exhibition Bolz will present five selected texts in the form of large colour plates. In addition to the colour plates, documentation is created in the form of an artist book.
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| Andy Holtin, Corrections, video still, 2009 |
Andy Holtin has grapheme synaesthesia, connected with a particular colour-number association. He sees numbers in specific colours, moreover, this is influenced by a partial red-green colour blindness, affecting certain nuances. In his video Corrections (2009) you can see how a hand colours in the numbers of different signs and nameplates in photographs. Corrections demonstrates the gap between the object and subjective sense perception as well as the personal impressions of the artist himself. By speeding up the video, the act of colouring in appears grotesque as the act of artist's hand achieves a form of slapstick. In his video Connections (2013) the artist examines the complications he experiences when objects share a colour with a particular number due to Holtin’s individual synaesthetic experience, creating an extended perceptual relationship.
During this final exhibition the synaesthesia series, Art Laboratory Berlin will host an international interdisciplinary conference "Synaesthesia. Discussing a Phenomenon in the Arts, Humanities and (Neuro-)science" (5 & 6 July, 2013, Glaskasten Theatre, Prinzenallee 33, next to Art Laboratory Berlin).
Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)
rapp@artlaboratory-berlin.org
cdelutz@artlaboratory-berlin.org
Presse: Olga Shmakova
olga.shmakova@artlaboratory-berlin.org
With the generous support of:
Media partner:
The Synaesthesia series is supported in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.
