Paul Simon Richards 'L*a*b'

About

[...]

To my cousins,
a wild combination.
Drank in by love of each other, under my bosom.
Burning for the lightning.

To my colours,
I am to be a flash of shining
front teeth

[...]

Paul Simon Richards (UK, 1981) work explores the potential of thought to make present in language that which cannot be experienced. Using mainly spoken word performance and video, Richards’ work draws together immersive narratives that incorporate elements of spectacular entertainment and moments of enlightened consciousness that come about during mundane daily tasks.

For his first exhibition at Arcade, Richards will present a new video work, L*a*b. L*a*b is about seeing in the dark, but not being able to see the thing in front of you. It describes the experience of imaginary colours as events which exceed the rules of language. It presents colour as a space, distinct from tone and light, setting the stage for a psychedelic melodrama played out by two characters. L*a*b consists of disjointed fragments of image and sound. Like the film’s protagonists, the viewer is unable to directly see the thing that they are looking at and instead must actively construct a sense of space and time.

L*a*b is a theoretical colour space used in digital imaging software such as photoshop, as an alternative to RGB and CMYK, it is often used in retouching and colour management. L*a*b offers the broadest conceivable spectrum of any colour space, it can be used to describe the physical experience of colour (the red of a firework, so bright that it hurts your eyes) and impossible colours (a yellowish-blue). According to L*a*b, these imaginary colours exist, in exactly the same way that pillar box red exists, however, screen technology is unable to reproduce them so we can only sense these colours indirectly through descriptions, statistics and proxy colours.

With support from the Elephant Trust.