Red, Green and Yellow

About

Red, Green and Yellow is the second in an ambitious trilogy of exhibitions produced in a collaboration between Flat Time House (FTHo) and the Roberts Institute of Art (RIA). Each exhibition explores a different facet of the complex network of ideas and relationships surrounding John Latham’s work in dialogue with important works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. Part II of the trilogy builds from Latham’s vivid spray-painted work Red, Green and Yellow (1967) which is presented alongside minimal and conceptual works by Liliane Lijn, Tim Head, Bob Law and Wolfgang Tillmans. These works all experiment with light, space and duration and resonate with Latham’s belief in reflective and intuitive modes of working. A new work has been commissioned in response to the exhibition by Berlin-based artist Julius Heinemann who has devised a new installation specially conceived for the space.

When John Latham used spray-paint as he did in Red, Green and Yellow, he was referring to the time based nature of all things. His first spray work from 1954 was a mural for a domestic dwelling, using the spray gun in an attempt to capture the essence of time through an almost instantaneous painterly act. Julius Heinemann’s subtle yet immersive installations, often produced with spray paint, explore layers of perception. Using the exhibition space as material – its dimension, structure and use as well as the change of light and shadow – the work reveals itself slowly, becoming all encompassing once discovered. He considers his mural interventions as echoes of events in time, recording the different layers and shifting experience of our surroundings.

Tim Head’s artwork deals with the instability and uncertainty of images and perception. His early conceptual photographs, made using hand mirrors, play on mirror-image illusions to create paradoxes and question how we view reality. Bob Law’s watercolours can appear like mirrors unless inspected at very close quarters. Due to the glazing on their surface, the viewer is forced to stand close to the work and to focus intently, treating the work as a contemplative object. Wolfgang Tillmans’ abstract ‘Silver’ series are photographs created without a camera. The imagery is created by traces of dust from the surface of the photosensitive paper reacting to light and chemical processes. Liliane Lijn’s Cosmic Flares III (1966) is a kinetic sculpture within which spotlights illuminate the surface at changing angles. For Lijn this play of light is suggestive of elemental forces, performing a visual investigation into the laws of physics.