I used to know an artist who only worked in yellow. Yellow paintings and yellow sculptures, all in grades of yellow and made in a yellow studio.
One yellow day a critic came along and said ‘This is not yellow work. This is really about black and white. It uses colour as a dialectic of shade. This work is not yellow. This work is black and white!’
Everyone heard this, especially the artist, who carried on making the yellow works.
Some years later I went back to the yellow studio, and was surprised to see no yellow works anywhere.
‘What happened to yellow?’ I asked. ‘All these works are black and white.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said the artist, ‘the works that I used to make were black and white. These ones are yellow!’
(Indirectly inspired by something in the discussion at Fatos Ustek’s seventh Fig-2 curatorial seminar)
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