Think, Dream, Imagine, Colours
Margrethe Odgaard – Willumsens Museum
June 12 to September 27, 2020
Award-winning color expert Margrethe Odgaard invites you into the poetic and mood-creating world of colors in a new exhibition at Willumsens Museum.
Willumsens Museum has a long tradition of inviting living artists to engage in dialogue with JF Willumsen's art, thereby bringing the collection into play and making it relevant to a contemporary audience. From June 12 to September 27, 2020, this will happen again when award-winning textile designer and color expert Margrethe Odgaard, who works in the tension between art and design, takes over Willumsens Museum with both new and existing works. Her series of works challenge our understanding of the properties of colors and explore new aspects of Willumsen's unique use of color.
Colors are the food of the soul and the language of the senses
Willumsen is known as a master of color and often uses colors in her artworks to evoke certain emotions and moods in the viewer. Similarly, colors also play a central role in Margrethe Odgaard's universe. Unlike many other designers and architects who prioritize form over color, she is convinced that color precedes form in our perception of an object. It is the color that has the greatest influence on how we read the product, as colors affect our senses, affect our mood and stimulate our emotions.
As she says:
"Colors are the reflection of light in the material. They are the emotional part of a structure. By working consciously with the effect of color, one can influence a person's experience of themselves in their surroundings in a sensory-nourishing way."
Exhibition title "Think, Dream, Imagine, Colors" is partly taken from the French painter Gustave Moreau and resonates as a keynote in Odgaard's own methodological approach to working with colors. According to her, colors must first be thought, dreamed and imagined before they can be used to create an effect. The exhibition is structured around the statement of the title, which thus becomes descriptive of the cyclical process of working with colors.
In search of colors
In “Think, Dream, Imagine, Colours”, colours are allowed to play the dominant leading role.
But colors are fleeting and changeable in relation to light, material and the eyes that see. They exist both as a result of refraction in light, migration of pigments in material and subjective sensations. The slightest change in the surroundings can change the appearance of the color and thus its effect on the viewer. That is why Odgaard's working process is careful and systematic. She works thoroughly and for a long time with the colors and has developed her own color indices several times in the search for the right color combination. She says:
“The special thing about working with colors is that there are so many possibilities. I usually say that there are as many shades of color as there are waves in the ocean. Colors are in constant motion and constantly change with the light, just as waves are constantly changing. For this reason, I feel more like a color hunter than a color designer. One second the magic of color is right in front of me, the next it is gone. But I am learning that the more precise I am in my search, and the better I articulate what I am looking for, the greater the chances of finding it.”
Reason and emotion – an artistic study
In the exhibition, Odgaard invites the audience to experience and reflect on the communicative power of color for themselves. The works in the exhibition will unfold around several artistic investigations that use emotional (the fleeting and subjective) and logical (the manageable and objective) approaches to understanding the complexity of colors and their connection to our cultural roots and language.
The series of works Emotional Structures creates a physically sensual encounter with its viewer by connecting color with our verbal language. Colors are a language in themselves, but consciously or unconsciously we also link colors to particular moods, which are often expressed in words. In the series of nine cubic works, Odgaard has created nine harmonies and moods simply by using different color combinations, which have been carefully selected based on the active actions of the colors. Odgaard uses a highly systematic method in almost all of his color schemes, where a deck of cards with verbs in the long form such as unifying, nourishing, singing, activating etc. are used to purposefully choose the colors. Prior to each work, Odgaard has thus defined the mood-giving effect she wants to create in her viewer.
The effect of colors in a spatial context
In the series of works Cubic Prism Primaries Odgaard uses mathematical language to describe the effect of color and thus attempts to concretize the ability of colors to reach out into space in order to make the effect of color manageable. The series is based on the idea of the cubic prism as a four-dimensional analogy of a cube. As is known, the cube consists of the three dimensions: length (x), width (y) and height (z). The refraction of light in the surface creates, with its radiations, in a way the fourth dimension, which can be understood as the spatial effect of color. Together with the work Is Color the Fourth Dimension? The rigorous mathematical language is contrasted by the works' materials of felt, organza, wool and embroidery, which together with the color and the viewer's subject create the fourth dimension.
That we not only need physical contact, but also sensory and aesthetic stimulation to thrive mentally and as humans, has only become clearer in recent times. “Think, Dream, Imagine, Colours” acknowledges the importance of colour for our mental and physical well-being by exploring its interplay with light, material and connection to our emotional lives. At the same time, our attitudes towards colour and the colourful also tell us something about personal experiences, cultural and geographical roots and historical taste judgments, which will be brought into play in the exhibition.
The exhibition will lead us a step closer to the essence of color, offer new perspectives for viewing colors and give us an insight into how both Odgaard and Willumsen work with materiality and effect. “Think, Dream, Imagine, Colors” will surround us with the poetic language of colors and provide much-needed sensory food.
The realization of “Think, Dream, Imagine, Colours” has been made possible by the generous support of the Bodil Pedersen Foundation, LF Foghts Foundation, Spar Nord Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation and the Toyota Foundation, as well as the sponsors Montana Furniture, Kvadrat and Ege Carpets.
Wholesaler LF Foghts Foundation
