Yellow-free Zone

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto Jannes Linders

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto Jannes Linders

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto Jannes Linders

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto Jannes Linders

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto SIR archief

Yellow-free Zone (2018), foto SIR archief


Het kunstwerk

De Franse kunstenaar Adrien Lucca (Parijs, 1983) heeft het lichtkunstwerk Yellow-free Zone speciaal ontworpen voor de hal van Metrostation Maashaven in Rotterdam, het metrostation dat ook wel ‘de entree van Zuid’ wordt genoemd. Lucca deed dit in opdracht van Sculpture International Rotterdam in samenwerking met RET en Rib, een kunstruimte in Rotterdam Zuid. Het kunstwerk werd op 17 december 2018 officieel onthuld en is nu dagelijks te zien in de hal van Metrostation Maashaven.

Yellow-free Zone is een lichtinstallatie die de bestaande verlichting van de hal van het station door een speciaal wit licht vervangt. De door Lucca ontwikkelde lampen werken als een ‘analoog photoshop-filter in realtime’. Het witte licht verwijdert de kleur geel uit alle lichamen en objecten die zich in de yellow-free-zone bevinden en veroorzaakt zo een ‘kleurverblindend’ effect. Sommige objecten worden intenser van kleur, terwijl andere juist vitaliteit aan kleur verliezen. Voor Lucca is het een magisch spel met licht en kleur dat de perceptie van de beschouwer ten opzichte van zichzelf en de wereld bevraagt.

Vervaardiging
2018

De plek

In het gebied rond Metrostation Maashaven met de wijken Tarwewijk, Afrikaanderwijk en Bloemhof ontwikkelde Sculpture International Rotterdam in samenwerking met diverse lokale partners het meerjarenprogramma Paleis Maashaven. Metrostation Maashaven vormde samen met de Maassilo het centrale punt in het gebied. Als start van Paleis Maashaven verplaatste Sculpture International Rotterdam in 2018 vier kunstwerken van het stadscentrum naar de omgeving van metrostation Maashaven. The Idler’s Playground van Cosima von Bonin staat nu tegenover het metrostation aan het begin van de Afrikaanderwijk en drie bronzen beelden zijn van de Coolsingel verhuisd naar de semi-publieke binnentuin van Cultuurcentrum Tarwewijk. De opdracht aan Adrien Lucca was de eerste opdracht voor een nieuw werk voor dit gebied.

Met dit nieuwe kunstwerk van Adrien Lucca wil Sculpture International tevens de bijzonderheid van Metrostation Maashaven tonen en beschermen. Het metrostation staat op een viaduct hoog boven de grond en wordt gedragen door toelopende betonnen pilonen. Samen met de luchtbrug vormt het een indrukwekkend en beeldbepalend bouwwerk aan de binnenhaven, voor het oog verbonden met de Maassilo. Het ontwerp van het station en viaduct is van architect Cor Veerling (Amsterdam, 1926). Veerling was jarenlang hoofdarchitect bij de Rotterdamse Dienst Gemeentewerken. Hij ontwierp veel Rotterdamse metrostations en ook de Rotterdamse Willemsbrug (1981). Zijn mede-ontwerpen aan de metrostations in Spijkenisse werden in 1986 bekroond met de Nationale Staalprijs.


Adrien Lucca

Adrien Lucca (1983) is beeldend kunstenaar en woont en werkt in Brussel, waar hij kleurdocent is aan École nationale supérieure des Arts visuels (ENSAV) La Cambre. Lucca bouwde in de loop der jaren een divers oeuvre op met tekeningen, prints, installaties en lezingen rond zijn wetenschappelijke onderzoek naar licht -en kleurgebruik. In zijn werk combineert hij meetinstrumenten, computeralgoritmes en de artistieke verbeelding. In 2010 en 2011 deed hij onderzoek aan de Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Eerder dit jaar was werk van Lucca te zien in de tentoonstelling Mémoire #2 White light researches/white light demons/white light demos in Rib. Een recent werk van Lucca in de publieke ruimte is Soleil de Minuit in de Metro van Montreal in 2017.

Zie ook de website van Adrien Lucca voor een filmpje van het werk Yellow-free Zone in voorbereiding en die van Rib in Rotterdam Zuid voor het werk Mémoire #2 White light researches/white light demons/white light demos dat hij daar in 2018 toonde.


YELLOW-FREE ZONE

Door Tiago de Abreu Pinto

Two people were at a table and talking effusively. One of them was a long-haired scientist and the other, a slim man who seemed to be a biographer. They were drinking with a finished chess game in front of them. The Biographer said that they had to go. All the bar noise bored him. Besides, he couldn’t go along with the game because of his back wound so they stood up and started walking the streets. He asked the Scientist to carry on talking about that smoldering topic of colour. The Scientist agreed but asked his interlocutor to follow him to a nearby metro station*. It was midnight when they arrived at the place. The biographer couldn’t really understand what was so significant there as he couldn’t see anything special.The Scientist asked him to look closely. The Biographer did and noticed two orange walls facing one another. He pointed them out to the Scientist. Each had a different tone of orange. One was pink and the other truly orange. However, aside from the colour he couldn’t really guess what was wrong. To help explain, the Scientist began telling him about different people like James Turrell who, according to the Scientist, was doing minimal monumental yet paradoxical art with illuminated spaces that are often perceived as surfaces which seem to possess an unlikely kind of depth. Turrell is interested in dealing with the light that we seem to know well, but which we don’t often see with our own eyes.

The Scientist went on to explain that at the end of the middle ages there was an organic change in all European languages; a semantic transformation. All the colour names stopped referring to lightness or clarity and started to refer to hue. As the categories changed so too did the meaning of the words used to describe colours. The Scientist spoke about how he had attempted to create an analogy between light, sound, colours and musical notation in his work. The biographer didn’t know that in Europe until the beginning of the 18th century, the relationship between light and colour was not conceptualized as it is today. Rather, light and colour were considered as mixtures of light and shadow and a conceptual identity between colour and lightness was predominant. The Biographer interrupted him to ask what hue is.

Hue, the Scientist confirmed, while the Biographer nodded affirmatively.The Scientist said that hue was likely the first quality of colour in Western culture. Hue dominates our understanding and our perception of colour today. The Scientist asked the Biographer how he would describe the walls. The Biographer replied saying that we would first mention the wall’s colour. To this the Scientist replied, naming the colour as “orange”. The Scientist underscored that nowadays people first refer to something by its hue before describing its lightness and saturation. The Scientist told him about how deeply grateful he was to Helmholtz for thinking of colour as we do today. Before the 18th century, a metaphysical and symbolical approach of light and shadow dominated what we now call colour. Before this, until the end of the 18th century, light and shadow were thought of as the structure by which we likely perceived colour. For example, sunlight was perceived as a pure manifestation of light. Shadow was not defined as negative nor as an absence of light, but, as a kind of substance. Shadow was likened to the existence of a “thing” in philosophical terms. The colour of bodies was considered to be a mixture of light and shadow. Yet, somewhat impossible to quantify and analyze.

The Biographer was confused. He wanted to know what the connection was between all that theoretical explanation and the two orange walls they were seeing. The scientist handed a piece of yellow paper to him. He then pointed to the corridor of the metro station and asked him to walk through it. The Biographer agreed and walked looking up. The Scientist then shouted to him to look down at the paper he had in hand. His eyes opened in surprise. He paused and brought the paper close to his eyes. He faced the Scientist and looked again at the paper and was speechless. The Scientist asked him why he had stopped. The Biographer’s dropped jaw said that the paper had changed. What had changed? The Scientist asked. Its colour the Biographer’s jaw replied. How is that possible? The Scientist asked. He invited the Biographer to approach him again. When he was quite close, the Scientist asked him to look at the paper again. It’s yellow now but, it was almost red. The Scientist said that even if colours cannot be reduced to physics, what’s interesting when you think like this is that the physics of colours cannot be sensed. Physics is a bunch of strings, like a piano with which you create music. When you have the means to work with colour at the level of the light spectrum, like a physicist, where are the boundaries of what is possible?

2019

* The metro station Maashaven in Rotterdam (NL), where the artist Adrien Lucca has installed “Yellow-free zone” in 2018 with the support of Sculpture International Rotterdam, LMNO Gallery, CBK Rotterdam, RET and Gemeente Rotterdam.

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