What is (a) vision?

Am having an epiphany in the archive of the national gallery while engaging with the iconic piece 1000 Farver (1000 Colours) from 1977 by Viera Collaro and Niels Nedergaard. Made during their academy years and inspired by Alfred Hickethier’s colour theory from 1952, it showcases 54 versions of combining 1000 colours. All 1000 colours are mixed by hand from a base of magenta, cyan and yellow and you see the silk print paper squares fade from 0 colour intensity/white to 9 full colour intensity.

In a way, it is a remarkably simple piece, almost mechanic and orchestrated through experimenting with an already defined system that anyone (with patience and grit) can reproduce.

Yet, when standing there asking myself “what is this work expressing,” the beautifully systematically fading surface broke into shapes out of which parts started to stand out. Like the scotch used as a frame. Or the inconsistencies in fading intensity. Or the wooden surface that start appearing through the paper. Or the hair that got caught under the varnish. Or the excess varnish leaving little pools of transparent brown. Or time making its marks as scratches and dirt.

First glance: colour perfection. Next glance: the human touch of bringing colour perfection into reality. Like giving a vision physical shape. Letting it be formed by what it meets in the process of materialisation.

So much of life is like that! My vision of love, fx, when meeting reality is definitely human, full of scratches, inconsistencies, humble framing, too much varnish and too much/little intensity.

Viera says that one impact of the work was that it trained her vision. She has intimate knowing of each of the 1000 colours. It allows her to move back and forth from vision to reality with sovereignty: to choose colours for her art works and to know what combination colours she sees are made of. What a gift!

In 1000 Colours you see too that two extremes of intensities are always connected. You see that letting the eye move from corner to corner. Shade by shade.

Always connected. Always related. Reality and vision. Intensity and its opposite.

Looking forward to dive into writing about Viera’s visionary work for her retrospective at Randers Kunstmuseum in the fall.