Colors 2017/2016/2012/2010/2008
Installation view, Wentrup Gallery, Berlin, 2012
Coloured nylon stockings, Poul Henningsen lamps
(photo credit: Trevor Good)
Installation view, Tactics of Invisibility, Arter, Istanbul, 2011
(photo credit: Murat Germen)
Installation view, Tactics Of Invisibility, Tanas, Berlin, 2010
Installation view, U-Turn Quadriennale, Copenhagen, 2008
Colors, Dotes and Stripes, 2017
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Orange, 2017
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Net, 2017
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Day and Night
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Blue Red, 2012
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Green Blue, 2012
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Yelllow Lack Dotted, 2012
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Brown Black, 2008
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Blue, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Black Blue, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Green Black, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Pink, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Camouflage, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Pink Nude, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Yellow Green, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Violet Red, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Black White, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Turquoise White, 2010
(photo credit: Nevin Aladağ)
Various sizes: Poul Henningsen lamps
PH4/3, H 20 cm, Ø 40 cm
PH5, H 28,5 cm, Ø 50 cm
PH 5-4½ Charlottenborg, H 31,8 cm, Ø 46,6 cm
PH 6½-6 Charlottenborg, H 50 cm, Ø 65 cm
In Nevin Aladağ’s piece Colors we encounter colour on multiple levels. Phenomenologically we are confronted with a set of lamps whose luminosity and appearance was masked by coloured tights. Through the title alone (and its North American spelling), the artist embeds this work in a discourse around skin-colours and politics. Already in 1952 Ralph Ellison decries the social invisibility through a “wrong” colour of skin in his novel “Invisible Man”. Moreover, Colors points to Dennis Hopper’s movie “Colors” from 1988, which can be seen as a sociological study on colour in a metaphorical and literal sense: here gang life and graffiti are at stake. Furthermore, Aladağ uses lamps that refer to Danish design icon Poul Henningsen’s classics and makes them undergo a sculptural and gender loaded alteration. Colors brings therewith various readings of colouration together, on an epistemological, sociological and aesthetic level that let us question the (in)visibility of colour.
(excerpt of the text by Nico Anklam)