I have been working with color and light for over 35 years. This practice began a with a project at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts with my fellow colleague and close friend Niels Nedergård in the early 70s. ” 1000 Colors” was a systematic study of a color theory by Alfred Hickethier, which we printed in silkscreen and than created various works based on this theory. The project led to a 5 year disciplined joint art work, culmanating in large scale installations. When this project ended, we each went our own way in individual art practice. While working with the color system, light was always an integral part of the theory. Discussions on the additive and the subtractiv color systems were often brought into our experiments and we created may works that related to the quality of light.
After the 5 years of ”1000 Colors” I went through a period of an expressive form of paintings and sculptures throughout the 80s and it wasnt until the 90s when I began to meditative and deeply go into my inner self that my minimal humanistic form of art came to being,. Light became more and more the central part of my art work. I found serenity in light and to work with it seemed to touch the center of my being. All along my art carrier, color has always been of utmost importance. And it is inevitable to work with color without being in focus on light. White light can be split into a spectral field relating to the rainbow. Light is part of nature and the universe. My attraction to light is due the infinite quality it possesses. Due to this, it can be compared with the universal aspects of mankind, the mind and the spirit.
In the 90s my art work began to expand from galleries and museums, to public spaces. The more basic and the more minimal my work became the more there came a very natural demand for the work from different directions in permanent public spaces. I received commissions where I integrated lights into a given building or specific area and made a parrallel with the functions of the space and the light I presented. My art work became the space that I formed for the light.
For me, the meaning of light correlates to the inner most area of my existence. Light not only is an outside force created through the electrical field and the sun, but is also part of the inner energy that travels through my body and than again connects me to a universal essence, awareness. Light is nourishing and light has to do with the spiritual realm, that which is part of my consciousness. Light is immaterial and it has an expansive quality that establishes space.
Featured image: “The Circle” 1997 by Viera Collaro, Kultural Center, Randers, Denmark.