"Das Wesen der Farben": Schattenfarben Exhibition in Rudolf Steiner Haus Berlin curated by ARE/Artistic Research Encounters

Participating Artists

Mintsi&Smolin

The gradations of black pigment applied to canvas with meticulous precision in the paintings of artists group mintsi&smolin is characterised with particular dynamics and movement. The medial support in their works serves as the experimentation ground where colour pigment is applied according special technique allowing for repeated application of colour at certain intervals of time. The dramatic tension of the pictorial space is achieved by means of use of special colour pigments that are prepared by the artists themselves from plants that they cultivate throughout the year. The rough, smudgy texture of the medial support reveals traces of artists gestures while applying colour onto canvas. The canvas surface contains particles of plants residues from which the pigments are obtained. It is not only the visual effect of light and shadows in their dramatic interplay that is important here but the whole concept of perennial cyclical transition from light to shadow, from day to night, from the register of microcosm to macrocosm that is stressed by the artists by means of using plants for their colour pigments: the perennial cycle of vegetation life on earth - that of life, growth, bloom, death and rebirth - influenced by eternal cosmic forces.

Sigrid Braun-Umach

Dynamic movement achieved through the interplay of light and shadow occupies a central theme in the painting Tief im Wald /Deep in the Wood/ by artist Sigrid Braun-Umbach. The colour palette of greens ranging from light to dark green, black verging on brown and glimpses of white imitate on the one hand one's progress through a thicket of the forest as well as a psychological process of movement within: submersion into one's own self a movement accompanied by the spots of clear inspiration and clarity - the light shining through and inevitably obscured by the darkness of the unknown and the unknowable. Wood as the symbol of wisdom and of the unknown is rendered in the painting as a precarious space where everything is in movement: the colours merge and fuse with each other, lines and silhouettes are obscured, the natural order implied by the green tones gives way to primordial chaos.

NatHalie Braun Barends

The works by NatHalie Braun Barends are all about metamorphosis – transition from one state into another. Her use of specific colour pigment that changes under the influence of light allows one to follow the subtle yet inevitable changes that occur in space and time. The medial surface is covered with smears, dots and splashes of colour that create a complex, intricate, interwoven pattern of rays, shapes and signs scattered all over. The compositionally central fan-like shape is particularly emphasised while its openness to the outside creates an explosion - a whole universe scattered apart. Some colours remain the same although acquire a certain new meaning with time whereas others disappear or are replaced by previously unnoticed, hardly visible tones and hues. The splashes, blots and vigorous sprays of colour pigment render a universe in formation, in its unfolding process of a movement to the utmost extremes almost like an expanding planet that is overwhelmed with light and gradually submerges into shadows. Here again one comes across the cycle of light and dark, clear and obscure, visible and invisible unless shape is replaced by the shapeless.