Colors 2017/2016/2012/2010/2008
Installation view, Wentrup Gallery, Berlin, 2012
Coloured nylon stockings, Poul Henningsen lamps
(photo credits: Trevor Good)
Installation view, Tactics of Invisibility, Arter, Istanbul, 2011
(photo credits: Murat Germen)
Installation view, Tactics Of Invisibility, Tanas, Berlin, 2010
Installation view, U-Turn Quadriennale, Copenhagen, 2008
Colors, Dotes and Stripes, 2017
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Orange, 2017
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Net, 2017
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Day and Night
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Blue Red, 2012
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Green Blue, 2012
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Yelllow Lack Dotted, 2012
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Brown Black, 2008
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Blue, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Black Blue, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Green Black, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Red Pink, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Camouflage, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Pink Nude, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Yellow Green, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Violet Red, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Black White, 2010
(photo credits: Nevin Aladağ)
Colors, Turquoise White, 2010
(photo credits: 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)