Embracing color for its own sake

Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez explores the magic of colors in A Bath of Color Sensitivity, featuring four cylinders formed by colored strips. Provided to China Daily

For several decades, Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, now 90, has been devoted to changing people's established understanding of color. The native of Venezuela explores the magic of colors in a rational manner. Color is not merely used to fill in forms, he insists; neither is it a combination of beauty or ugliness.

Cruz-Diez interacts with lines, space and light in his creations to explore the essence of color, and how it influences people's perceptions. His works always stimulate audiences to experiment with every possibility of color.

"None of my works is done by accident. All of them are planned, and processed in a systematic and orderly way. I don't rely on inspiration, I'm thinking," says the artist, who shares his philosophies of color at a solo exhibition, Circumstance and Ambiguity of Color, at the art museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

On display are dozens of his prints, installations and photos of industrial designs. People may feel being betrayed by their eyes when they shift positions in front of the works.

In Chromosaturations Cruz-Diez set up three chambers, which he immersed in red, green and blue lights. When people move slowly from one space to another, their eyes are constantly engaged. For instance, viewers will find the blue light gradually weakens to almost white if they stay longer; and in the area where the blue and red rooms border, people see a beautiful mixed color of purple and pink.

"We are accustomed to a multicolored world. Our eyes find great stimulus and it's difficult to adjust to a single and saturated blue. While the colors of purple and pink don't exist. It's an imaginary color that the human brain produces to adapt to circumstances," the artist explains.

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