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THE SECRET COLOURS OF EASTERN EUROPE 2015

Oil Pastel On MDF and Wooden Panels

 

THE SECRET COLORS OF EASTERN EUROPE observes decorative painted details in a reconstructed synagogue in eastern Poland. The colors used for this small decorative element were brown, light brown, and rose. Intuitively, I would never come up with such a color scheme. Since encountering this element, I am accompanied by the question how color compositions relate to the places they appear in, imprinted by the colors of the landscape and the light of this particular place. How much does their appearance speak about the surrounding place? What happens with these colors and patterns when they are removed from their place of origin and travel or migrate?

 

For these specific drawings, I tried to use colors I would encounter in Eastern Poland, West Ukraine. This went against the grain of my own understanding and feelings towards color. I also applied a method often used in architecture to show space in a very simple manner: one side of the colorful shape is turned to the light, reflecting it, the other side faces downwards, and is darker. The scheme pretends in a very simple way to construct a three-dimensional space. 

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