Fashion in Colour
Theatermachine was delighted to provide lighting design for the exhibition Fashion in Colour in Kunstmuseum The Hague. In close collaboration with designer Maarten Spruyt and curator Madelief Hohé, we developed special light installations in addition to the exhibition spaces. Light installations intervene with the spaces to support the story of Fashion in Colour.
Jozef Albers ‘interaction of color’
Maarten Spruyt was inspired for the design by the color studies and paintings of Jozef Albers. Albers was particularly interested in the interaction of colors. Color areas that influence each other, give depth and glow. Albers quotes: “in visual perception, a color is almost never seen as it really is – as it is physically. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art. If someone says red and 50 people are listening, you can expect 50 colors of red to be depicted in the minds of the listeners, all of which can be different”. In this exhibition, rooms and fashion are indexed by color. Fashion items are mixed up over time, resulting in surprising combinations. Maarten Spruyt has created a beautiful route in which colours become more intense from room to room.
Light installations
The ‘walking route’ that the public follows starts with a light installation, an immersion in green light in which a sequence of composed ‘white light’ is projected on a wall. Leaving the room to the next, we first see a pinkish glow due to the afterimages in our heads. You walk through rooms with muted natural colours, ocher, and light green. From the pastel colored rooms, the exhibition becomes more and more intense in colour; red, yellow, dark blue and purple slowly take over. In the middle of the exhibition there is a blue room where you as spectator are almost disconnected from this world. At the end of the exhibition you end up in a hall of mirrors where you see reflections of yourself in colours that are not in the lights !
Fashion in Colour is on display from 26 September 2020 until 28 February 2021 at Kunstmuseum The Hague.
Idea and concept: Madelief Hohé
Exhibition design: Maarten Spruyt
Lighting design: Floriaan Ganzevoort and Isabel Nielen – Theatermachine.
Team: Mike Evers, Sander Schaart, Isabel Nielen and Floriaan Ganzevoort.
Thanks to the construction and lighting team of Kunstmuseum The Hague.
Photography: Floriaan Ganzevoort and Alice de Groot