SANTA FE, NM.- In a dark forest, a flash of white from a deer’s tail. In a golden field, the ultra-violet of a cluster of flowers. The black shadow of a large shape beneath green waves. The red flash of a wing spiraling against blue sky. It might not be too much to say that homo sapiens wouldn’t exist, at least not as we do now, without our ability to see colors. As quintessentially adaptable creatures, our brains developed around the talent for picking up complex patterns and colors, in our environment. It not only kept us alive but helped us thrive. It is a foundational part of who we are. One only needs to sit in a mono-color office building under fluorescent lighting to start to feel what it does to the body and mind to be denied our natural habitat of color.

But there is more to this foundational connection to color. Color is freighted with meaning. It provokes the nervous system, pricks us with emotion, it triggers memory, elicits profound response. Personal, cultural, biological. We are alarmed and delighted and soothed by our colorful world, moment by moment.

For German artists Heiner Thiel and Michael Post – color is all. For decades, their work has sought to explore both the tangible and ethereal qualities of color, abstracted from narrative or naturalistic form. Art focused on the perception and experience of color itself. In 2013 in Weisbaden, Germany, the artists conceived of the idea of a curated exhibition on the theme of Embodying Colour which would travel to both major cities and with “outtakes,” including fewer of the original artists, appearing worldwide in galleries. Over the years the exhibition has appeared in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and France, with this iteration at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art marking its first U.S. appearance, and including work from fellow German artist, Peter Weber.

Viewers will be familiar with the intense and intriguing effect of Heiner Thiel’s arced wall sculptures. The concave shapes are cut from aluminum and anodized through a painstaking industrial process which allows Thiel’s pieces to achieve a coating of color that is only 26 microns thick, thinner than a human hair. This intensely compacted color, combined with the concave shape of the work, creates a unique experience where the color will shift and change as the viewer moves around the piece. Sometimes it can even seem as if the color lifts off the piece itself, ghosting above the surface.

Michael Post’s exploration of color is twofold, with the surface color sometimes taking a backseat to the color he applies to the verso. These neon hues, canted with the shapes just off the wall, glow and reflect – casting colored “shadows” and painting on the wall. While previous works shown at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art have primarily had matte black or metallic surfaces, several of Post’s new pieces have added a new element, using lacquers polished to a high gloss to create a mirror-like surface. Here the viewer can find themselves reflected, embedded within the color of the piece itself.

What started out, for Peter Weber, as intricately folded paper invitations to his exhibitions, became the primary focus of his artistic work. Weber’s color-drenched three-dimensional wall-sculptures are intricately constructed from a single piece of felt cloth. Tucked and draped, folded and woven, these works create complex patterns that raise and disappear – with the light highlighting and shadowing the color, pulling the eye from one edge to another. The dense, compacted, blurred texture of the material adds an additional depth to the pieces, which allows the fabric color to shift with the light.

Embodying Colour - Outtakes provides viewers an opportunity to saturate themselves in a sensual experience of color. –— Michaela Kahn, Ph.D.

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
'Embodying Colour: Outtakes' by Michael Post, Peter Weber and Heiner Thiel
July 28th, 2023 - August 26th, 2023