Synaesthesia
/ 4:
Translating, Correcting, Archiving
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
Synaesthesia
/ 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving presents works by Ditte Lyngkær
Pedersen (DK), Eva-Maria Bolz (D) and Andy Holtin (USA). The exhibition
devotes itself to selected artistic strategies for decoding the phenomenon
of synaesthesia. It is significant that all three artists experience different
forms of synaesthetic perception.
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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.
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