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1600 Years of Light *field

2019

Manuel Abendroth, Jérôme Decock, Els Vermang

1600 Years of Light *field
dimensions

site specific, variable dimensions

variable dimensions

material

uranium ore, Geiger Counter, Speaker

history

2024 ___ painting, writing, ... , solo-show, Dan Galeria, Sao Paulo

2023 ___ Off screen, art fair, solo booth, Garage Hausmann, Paris

2022 ___ ZEITZEICHEN | ZEICHENZEIT, solo-show, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim 

2021 ___ Ce mouvement...,, solo-show, Galerie La Patinoire Royale, Brussels 

2019 ___ IF THEN ELSE, solo-show, Casino Luxembourg

abstract

This yellow field inscribes in the tradition of the Monochrome but does not find its raison d’être in pure abstraction but rather as a simple state of reality. Its pigment, the uranium ore constantly emits energy into space, leading to its intense yellow colour to vanish, turning into black in 1600 years.

project text

This yellow field recalls the pictorial tradition of the avant-garde, celebrating the monochrome as the most iconic and emblematic form of painting. While Kazimir Malevich's Black Square proposed a supremacist and emotional representation of space-time, and Yves Klein's blue pigmentations embraced the notion of infinity, this radio-luminescent monochrome presents itself as being finite and concrete.

But, as opposed to its tradition, it does not find its ”raison d’être” in pure abstraction but rather as a simple state of reality. Its pigment, the uranium ore constantly emits energy into space, leading to its intense yellow colour to vanish, turning into black in 1600 years. This radio-luminescent monochrome is the expression of something finite and concrete. It's a painting in permanent transformation, made tangible by the clicking of a Geiger counter.

Here, colour is a state in time, whose temporal scope exceeds that of human perception. As such, it is inaccessible to the viewer, who can only persevere in contemplation in the face of this immense energy field. As a result, the work explores the duality between the visible and the invisible, between the thinkable and the unimaginable, and questions the limits of representation.

art installations by the Belgian art studio LAb[au] working at the crossing of art&language, art&architecture in the tradition of concrete, conceptual, kinetic and digital art

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