Coloris

‘ … colour, colour form and colour in space’(1)

Through the invitation from Blindside to explore the relationship between architecture and the development of two-dimensional abstraction, Beata Geyer establishes an abstraction of her own, incorporating architectural boundaries and the dispensability of colour within a limitless ocean of conceptual form.

Polish born, Beata Geyer has exhibited in Europe, England, Israel, the United States and Australia. She has a background in architecture, design and photography that is evident through her latest art practice which embraces a wide range of contemporary art forms including painting, photography and large scale site specific installation projects. Geyer’s European lineage is evident through the basis of both her practical and theoretical work. Closely investigating the same notions that avant-garde constructivist artists such as Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Katarzyna Kobro developed, Geyer delves into the theories of unism (1922-36) in her contemporary art work which “... encompasses the whole spectrum of contemporary artistic experience, engaging with temporal and spatial conditions of the art-making process as well as the cultural social millieu...”(2) This exploration into transforming and growing 2D coloured form within a 3D architectural enclosure brings forth the importance of process and construction (which Geyer titles as form-ation) and to a larger extent its advancement through contemporary space and freedom.

For Geyer form-ation encompasses a larger milieu than purely the exploration of form in contemporary art. Form-ation allows a journey outside the boundaries of the traditional arts in terms of spaciality and dimensionality. Form-ation allows ‘a conceptual enfolding of spaces’, an interchange between the virtual, cultural and perceptual.(3) Geyer states, ‘for me, this means that the artistic process is not really about new inventions or discoveries, but about new modes of construction, the processes of rearrangement, recombinations, de/re/constructions and formations.’(4) Geyer suggests that in her work she treats form as an autonomous being that is always on the move, form-ation is borne from the constant exchange between her and her art, creating a discourse in its own right.

Coloris is a site-specific work for Blindside in Melbourne. This project explores ‘a notion of instability of form through colour movement’. Geyer starts with the architecture of the gallery as the inspiration for the construction of abstracted colour, and embraces the view from the gallery windows of surrounding architecture, to create an installation that transcends the preconceived notions between architecture, design and art. Through the use of form and space, combined with paint, Coloris, brings forth the notion of where colour falls within nature’s spatio-temporal field. The saturation of colour in Coloris allows the artist’s movement between differing art forms, painting, sculpture and architecture, by populating the architectural space with her painterly colour field. ‘Making installation or site-specific works that are neither painting nor sculpture, my interests range from the purely ‘pictorial’, such as form and colour, to more ‘spatial’, such as space, spatial relations and architecture’.(5) Geyer uses the architecture of space as the canvas to which her colour field comes to fruition.

Coloris celebrates colour in its most untainted form; free from controlled notions. Geyer places colour in temporal space ready for growth. The cyclical life of nature and construction in its fullest is paramount to this show, as is the destruction and dispersal of its existence. Coloris looks at where and how colour stands in contemporary art, forcing all preconceived notions out and inviting a new conversation with its participants.

Olivia Poloni
2005

1 Beata Geyer, Coloris: Notes on Form, Colour and Space, 2005
2 Beata Geyer, Constructions, Masters Thesis, 2001 p3
3 ibid
4 ibid
5 Constructions, Master of Visual Arts Research Paper 2001