the philosophy of color

Modeka Art, in partnership with Gajah Gallery, is pleased to announce the group show entitled “The Philosophy of Color”, featuring the artworks of Dini Nur Aghnia, Nasser Lubay, Peter Yuill, and Rosit Mulyadi.

Color – by definition, it is an attribute of visual perception that can be told through categories such as red, blue, yellow, or purple. Contemplating on the existence of colors, it is effortless to think that colors are independent properties of commodities in our environment: properties such as shape and size, whose nature independently exists based on our experience of them. If this were the case, how do colors fit into the world? Do they even exist?

With the circumstances from the past year, nationwide quarantines have altogether changed digital interactions wherein they are now seen as a necessity. Rosit Mulyadi surveys the essence of self-presentation online through the stylistic choice of this new series by combining the traditional practices of imitating Old Master artworks, mixed with the culture of the Internet, as well as partially modifying and abstracting these images to communicate an aura of vagueness and obscurity. This serves as a metaphor for the self-construction process in today’s social media age.

Dini Nur Aghina turns her gaze to nature as her main source of inspiration and artistry. Retrieving scenes from the living world, her artistic practice moves her to observe the daily glories in her surrounding environment in Yogkarta with great effort and determination – from sprawling fields to rugged mountains, she expresses the natural environment in a fresh and reminiscent way through her works. Utilizing the orthodox clay medium, she captures each scene from memory, filling her canvases with vividly colored disks which in the end, veers away from creating a complete, fixed image. Dini’s landscapes serve as a source of motivation to become fully engaged in the subtleties of the present, knowing that the wonders of every moment can never be truly recreated.

Nasser Lubay considers himself a storyteller who narrates through his artworks using all the colors of the world. His works portray the remarkable feeling of a moment – a point in space and time that becomes extraordinary due to its lack of permanence. His first solo exhibition, “Nursery of Curiosities”, moved him to deepen his research into the theme of cosmic germination and enriched his artistry with hints of fear and horror. The portraits for this show were remarkable and demonstrated his ability to expand his artistic language to a purely figurative world.

The circular paradigm – this highly analytical and technical form has become a trademark for emerging artist Peter Yuill. The image serves as his confrontation to humanity’s never-ending quest to demystify the universe and the antithesis of the inevitable limit of their capability to understand all the secrets of nature. In this liminal space between the known and the unknown, Yuill achieves mental transparency through synchronizing the visceral tempo of his mind with the rhythm of nature. In Yuill’s own words, “There can never be a true understanding of our purpose. Not through thought, reason, or mathematics. To understand this, was to let go, and begin the next stage of existential development. To be truly free.” With this realization, Yuill maintains the alignment between his artistic practice and spiritual growth.

As a crucial form of communication, color is inestimably precious. In the world of art, besides it being used as a means to express emotion, color may be utilized for aesthetic attraction, creating an illusion, of even evoking a reaction from viewers. The Philosophy of Color explores the use of pigmentation through the diverse yet nearly unified artworks of these artists, each of which represent their own reflections of color.

The Philosophy of Color is on view from February 27, 2021 – March 20, 2021. 

Explore the exhibition online on EXPERIENCES