Many books were dedicated to colour (My Name Is Red), genres are coined by colours (red library, white telephones), colour can express an opinion or an ideology (green, red, brown, white). This is a phenomenon by which we name and interpret the world. At the same time, the color is unstable, fluid, although we try to mark it accurately, measure and anchor it. It is fully dependent on our vision and on its medium. The exhibition turns to blue, a colour associated with our post-internet situation, the interchangeability of the virtual and the real worlds, but also the colour of sky, water and infinity, and of course the color of the concept of European integration, right wing and repressive forces of the state.
Jana Bernartová's project is based on her long-term interest in the phenomenon of colour, her interest in how colour appears to us in various technological and cultural contexts, and how it is influenced by the physiological limits of our perception. This exhibition is, in a sense, the culmination of the artist's interest, as she expands her artistic research with curatorial activity. Jana Bernartová asked artists and theorists to create a special “something on blue” for the exhibition. Often she let them fluctuate between theory and artistic expression, or dissolved the boundaries of these areas. Thus, the text is not only intended for paper, for reading, but can also be made into a movie or a performance. Sound can be perceived analogously as colour. The exhibition is a collective discussion on the theme of blue.
Title Love, Death & Blue paraphrases the title of popular Netflix series´ episode Zima Blue, which tells story about an artist seeking a meaning of art and life and therefore travels through styles and identities: abandons realistic depictions and finds the abstraction, finds blue and transforms himself from a robot into a man and backwards.
Likewise, the exhibition finds blue as a default colour of the digital age and works with it from a scale of analogue print, an artifact to digital imaging, blue sound, blue light, blue background as the void, that serves to achieve any image or concept of the robot and its rights. The individual imaginary chapters of the exhibition move from the topic of imaging digital color, that is always dependent on its imaging medium and is never exact, to the topic of sound as a medium of colour or sound without content. Another layer is contemplation on the blue digital light emitted from screens. This highly-energy visible light (HEV) is also an essential part of our lives, while at the same time we do not know exactly how our body absorbs such light and how harmful or beneficial it may be. The blue exhibition platform closes with a text that reflects the possibility of how our behavior is preset and whether we are robots.
Law theoretician Petr Agha prepared the text Black Box Society for the exhibition, in which he thinks of human uniqueness as a biological configuration. Just as machines are configured, the present can be a transition event on an evolutionary scale. The installation of digital artist Jana Bernartová expands The RGB Liquid Crystals cycle, which explores the possibilities of displaying colors. The initial consideration that digital color is never accurate in its depiction, and that it exists in thousands of incarnations, is shifted by this exhibition towards analog competition. “Traditional” graphics coupled with color schemes to calibrate printed output, like the seemingly sophisticated PC digital color system, strive to exceed the precision of its media. The sound installation of multimedia artist Milan Guštar 50/60 works with signals without useful content.
Atoms and molecules of all substances constantly carry out a chaotic thermal movement, so the noise is inherent to all matter. Depending on the shape of the frequency spectrum, types of noise are indicated by color based on analogy to the light spectrum. White noise has a uniform spectrum, noise on the red side of the spectrum has energy concentrated in the lower frequency range, for noise from the blue side of the spectrum is the maximum energy in the high frequency range.
In today's digital age, blue light emitted by screens has become part of our lives and normal light rays. Theoretician Jana Horáková subjected the new phenomenon to performative thinking. The video installation Blue Dance (2016) by Filip Kopecký brings the viewer into a two-hour performance. The dancer loses their anonymity, leaves the normal situation of a club or party and constantly dances in the gallery. The blue canvas associates virtuality, changing of the context of space, and indicates the post-production possibilities of the present. The newest part of the exhibition is a photograph of Eva Rybářová, which she conceived together with Jana Bernartová. Photographs titled I could not decide if the blue resembles more sky or sea were created for visual material of the current program quarterly periodical of the TIC Gallery as a secondary commentary on the exhibition on blue. A graceful, shimmering but empty matrix is a poignant metaphor for the virtual world.
