Colors  2017/2016/2012/2010/2008

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)