White Space Art Asia | Goethe’s Colours | White Space Art Asia

Goethe’s Colours

From 1 September to end December 2019, our gallery will be unveiling our forthcoming collection, Goethe’s Colours. We will be showcasing exciting new works from Irwanto Lentho, Kus Budiyanto, Bob Yan, Liu Peng, Maureen Hoon and Han Fang.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe devised a colour diagram in the 18thcentury, associating colours with their respective psychological and emotional resonances. He grouped them into 4 temperaments/humours: sanguine (yellow/green/cyan), melancholic (violet/magenta/red), choleric (red/orange/yellow) and phlegmatic (cyan/blue/violet). Goethe, like Shakespeare, understood human personalities in terms of these 4 humours and their influences on the human body.

In this gallery show, the use of colour is not merely a means of representing reality, but rather, the heightened sensitivity and emotional responses to them through the artworks. Inspired by Goethe’s colour diagram, this concept is embedded through an assemblage of allusive narratives, traditions and imagined vistas. Taken collectively, the artworks in this collection highlights the lenses of perception that filters the everyday experiences of the individual. This is an attempt to glimpse into the artists’ universes in hopes that it acquaints us with a fresh perspective.

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