Grietje M. Hoogland

The photographs of the Danish Mads Gamdrup are interesting to see. At first sight these bright coloured dots already hint to a scientific notion of colour, because of the primary colours that are used in a grid. And indeed, when looking at the website of Christian Larsen Gallery, where these photographs hang, a detailed description of his work and the scientific aspect of it, is presented. It explains how Gamdrup uses colour theories of Newton and Goethe to blur monochromatic colour dots to white, which has an intense impact on the viewer. Seeing them full scale makes you almost dizzy.

These theories I will not go into too far, but I reckon everyone is familiar with the spectral theory on colour by Newton, which we still use today. Colour is a reflection of light, which can occur in different ways (different colours), depending on the surface of the object. The colours defined by Newton are the ones you can see when a beam of light is put through a prism: from magenta to violet. These colours are used by Gamdrup as well, but now from an inkjet printer.
Goethe’s theory has to do with the impact of colour on the viewer: afterimages, visual effects etc. These are definitely important for Gamdrup as these effects are mindblowingly present. It is hard to stay in the exhibition room for too long, because the effects are so strong.
Interesting is that I have seen work of this nature before, a few years ago by Roland Schimmel. He has a different approach: he blurs the colours together and doesn’t use a grid. Another difference is the big black dots in his works, which leads the focus of the viewer. This way your eyes are on the dots, which makes the blurred colours outside the dots even more radiant. However, there are also striking familiarities: they both use this technical approach of the use of colour, together with theories on perception. And they both ended up using pure, primary colours and a similar way of blurring to enhance the effect on the viewer. Whether these artists have met each other, or seen each others work, is not clear. A duo-exhibition would be very interesting though.