OBSERVED vs LIVED COLOUR

Colour as experience, not surface

A positioning essay for the practice of Kohlben Vodden

INTRODUCTION

Colour in this work is not a property of the surface and not a fixed visual fact. It is an event that happens between the work, the light in the room, and the person standing in front of it.

It does not exist in one place. It appears in the relationship between things.

Remove any one of these elements and colour collapses into something else. What remains is material, reflection, or memory. Not colour itself.

OBSERVED

Observed colour is how most people first encounter colour.

It is the assumption that colour is stable. That red is red. Blue is blue. That what you see is what the object contains.

This way of seeing is reinforced by reproduction systems: screens, print, photography, catalogues. In all of these, colour is fixed into a single outcome. It becomes something that can be recorded and repeated.

In this mode, the viewer is outside the process. The work is complete without them.

LIVED

Lived colour begins when that assumption stops holding.

In this work, colour changes depending on where you stand. It shifts with movement, distance, and angle. A small step can alter what is seen.

The work does not present a single image. It produces different colour states depending on position and light.

Here, the viewer is no longer separate from the work. They become part of what makes it visible.

OPTICAL COLOUR MIXING

The colour in these works is not created through physical colour mixing.

Instead, it is produced through optical colour mixing.

Layers of differently dyed resin are built up so that colour is not resolved at the level of material. It is resolved in the eye. Light passes through layers, reflects off mirrored surfaces, and returns to the viewer carrying combined colour information.

What is seen is not a single fixed pigment outcome. It is the result of layered optical interaction.

The colour is held in the structure, but completed in perception.

THE VIEWER

Each viewer produces a different colour experience.

The mirrored surfaces reflect the viewer back into the work. Light bounces off the viewer’s body, re-enters the piece, and is returned again into the space.

Because each person reflects light differently, each interaction produces a slightly different result.

What someone sees is not only determined by the work itself, but by their position within it.

In this sense, colour is not shared in a fixed way. It is generated uniquely in each encounter.

No two people stand in front of the same colour.

COLOUR

Colour in this work is not stored in the material and not fixed in advance.

It is produced through the interaction of optical colour mixing, reflective surfaces, and the presence of the viewer.

Outside of this interaction, colour does not fully exist. There is only material, light, and reflection waiting to be completed.

CLOSING POSITION

This work is not about representing colour more accurately.

It is about showing that colour is not stable in the first place.

Between OBSERVED and LIVED is the moment where colour stops being assumed and starts being produced.

That is where the work takes place.