French artist Adrien Lucca (Paris, 1983) designed the light art work Yellow-free Zone specifically for the hallway of subway station Maashaven in Rotterdam. Lucca did this commissioned by Sculpture International Rotterdam in collaboration with RET and Rib, an art space in Rotterdam South. The artwork was officially unveiled on December 17, 2018 and can now be seen daily in the entrance area of the subway station.
Yellow-free Zone is a light installation that replaces the existing lighting in the station’s concourse with a special white light. The lamps developed by Lucca act as an ‘analog photoshop filter’ in real time. The white light removes the color yellow from all bodies and objects located in the yellow-free zone, creating a ‘color-blinding’ effect. Some objects become more intense in color, while others lose vitality to color. For Lucca, it is a magical play with light and color that questions the viewer’s perception toward himself and the world.
Year
2018
Location
Maashaven
Dimensions
20 x 10 m
Material
Light fixtures
Client
Sculpture International Rotterdam
Owner
Gemeente Rotterdam
The location
In the area around subway station Maashaven with the neighborhoods of Tarwewijk, Afrikaanderwijk and Bloemhof, Sculpture International Rotterdam developed the multi-year program Paleis Maashaven in collaboration with various local partners. Maashaven, together with the Maassilo, formed the central point in the area. To kick off Paleis Maashaven, Sculpture International Rotterdam moved four artworks from the city center to the area around Maashaven in 2018. Cosima von Bonin’s The Idler’s Playground now stands opposite the metro station at the beginning of the Afrikaanderwijk neighborhood, and three bronze sculptures were moved from Coolsingel to the semi-public courtyard of Cultuurcentrum Tarwewijk. The commission to Adrien Lucca was the first commission of a new work for this area.
With this new artwork by Adrien Lucca, Sculpture International Rotterdam also wants to show and protect the uniqueness of Maashaven. The metro station stands on a viaduct high above the ground and is supported by tapered concrete pillars. Together with the air bridge, it forms an impressive and image-defining structure on the inner harbor, connected to the Maassilo to the eye. The design of the station and viaduct is by architect Cor Veerling (Amsterdam, 1926). Veerling was head architect at the Rotterdam Municipal Works Department for many years. He designed many Rotterdam subway stations as well as the Willemsbrug (1981).
Adrien Lucca
Adrien Lucca (Paris) 1983) is a visual artist living and working in Brussels, where he teaches color studies at École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre. Over the years, Lucca has built up a diverse body of work with drawings, prints, installations and lectures around his scientific research into the use of light and color. His work combines measuring instruments, computer algorithms and the artistic imagination.
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?
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