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RE-invert
From 1989 to 1992 Jan Skovgård visited art museums all over Europa. From the Joensu Art Museum in Finland to Prado in Madrid, from the Uffizi in Florence to the Tate Gallery in London.
During his travels Jan Skovgård gradually built an extensive archive of slides of photographed masterpieces.
He has, with the help of a computer, piled these slides on top of each other. He has sampled all the masterpieces into one picture.
He has then determined digitally the median colour of all colours and shades of the picture. It is not the resulting colour which is presented here, but its complementary colour.
On the one hand the colour is maximal, added masterpieces; a distillation of the fundamental values of Western culture. On the other hand, this enterprise is conceptual (that is: intolerably artful) and in any case impossible to verify. As a phenomenon the colour is minimal.
Pale blue.
The above text is from 1996 and reproduced in the book UPDATE from the same year (note 1).
The book also contains a photo with a view from the exhibition LOSE, Consul Exhibition Space, from 1994, displaying an installation of three identical square aluminium plates, … all with the colour Invert, applied as an industrial varnish.
These monochrome works reappear in the current series. 30 years have passed, and the RE-invert series marks this anniversary. The aluminium plates have been retrieved from one of my storages, and the photo shoots have been taken in the garden in Falling together with Klaus Marthinus, with whom I developed the LOSE exhibition in 1994.
The colour Invert was also used in connection with an exhibition later that year titled Ånde (note 2).
In the book UPDATE, which also documents this exhibition with numerous installation photos, the accompanying text is very short:
An
oscillating breeze – not a strong wind, but enough to style your hair.
Electric fans
and blowers. Featuring the colour Invert.
Note 1: UPDATE, 1996. ISBN 87-7483-363-4
Note 2: Ånde – Danish for Breath
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