Blushings, fired ceramic (Saint-Amand), Astaxanthin (Haematococcus pluvialis), rainwater from Antwerp, 306 tiles of 18 x 18 cm, 306 x 340 cm, series of 12 casted blood oranges in eco resin, Astaxanthin (Haematococcus pluvialis), Phycocyanin (Arthrospira platensis), Activated charcoal, approx. 9 x 9 x 9 cm
I love you, Video, Full HD, 0’34’’
If red was a place, Astaxanthin (Haematococcus pluvialis), Activated charcoal, eco resin, imprints of blood oranges, each 84,5 x 42 x 2 cm
Sunburn, Astaxanthin (Haematococcus pluvialis), cotton, mordant, dyed fabric processed in UV-simulation chamber, each 19 x 24 cm
Heatings for plants, Hibiscus mutabilis, Solenostemon scutellarioides, fired ceramic (Saint-Amand) with imprints of salmon skin, heating cables, plaster, plywood, MDF, fabric electric cables, dimensions variable
Courtesy of Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp/BE, Images by We Document Art
Blushing
As the warming of the climate accelerates, cells, bodies and landscapes redden or blush more frequently. Rising temperatures cause lakes to turn vermilion, skins to burn or the noses of cats to darken into one of the many shades of rose. Facing an increasingly burning earth, new pathological vulnerablites occur such as thermophobia (fear or intolerance to heat) or heliophobia (fear or intolerance to the sun). Blushing can tell us in some cases that a relationship has lost its balance, in other cases it indicates solely time passing. It can be read as a sign of a (self-)care in organisms as well as a response to respective beauty standards.
Yet, opposed to the clock high up in the train station that tells us to hurry, those many blushings happen on their own timeline. The ephemeral quality of a blush in a human takes few seconds to appear, triggered by an outward experience which turns inward. The blushing of seas or oceans can take months to build up, slowly turning from green to orange to finally crimson. In contrast, the blushing of the hibiscus plant can be witnessed in only one day.
Blushing human and non-human agents and the lens of colour become a means to remember us of the time things take. Through some of these situated cases, this catalogue (accompanying the exhibition) wonders how these traces inherit the idea of a tool to measure time and how memory of these encounters materializes, or rather how these traces become materialized memories themselves: mute witnesses to an ever changing globe. Colour plays a crucial part here insofar, that all these encounters speak through a language of sometimes gradual or almost invisible, in other cases flashing colour-changes, but always of a multispecies (and across) communication. This catalogue focuses on the relationality between two parties involved in one encounter, both affecting each other. Every contact leaves a trace, no matter how unremarkable it will be.
Blushing becomes a method to draw an observation across species in order to grasp different reddenings from different perspectives and to be able to empathize with our many blushing companions. How can we care not only for our skin but for the skins of environments, seas, animals, plants or paintings? What tools do we have to read these signs surrounding us and what parallels or gaps of understanding and knowledge can we encounter?
In the end, we always have to take into account who is the one looking.
Excerpts Blushing (online-catalogue):
