VALERIE VAN LEERSUM
artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
In collaboration with the Embassy of the North Sea, I research the color of the North Sea. In order to properly describe the color shades in nature, I rely on color indices, such as the Forel-Ule scale, but also on Werner's Nomenclature of Colors (1814), which was also used by Charles Darwin to observe nature and to describe. For the research I invited people in pairs to talk about their sensory perception and memory of the North Sea. With this conversation in mind, people were invited to put together a personal color palette of the North Sea. In this way, the topography of the landscape was linked to the mind and how these two communicate with each other.
In the second phase of the project I investigated how the melting water of Antarctica influences the color of the North Sea. I mixed the already made color pallets of the North Sea with color pallets of the meltwaters of Antarctica. It’s a first attempt to talk about the bigger picture. A sea is never isolated and is in contact with both the greatness of global gulf streams and the very smallest original sources of rivers.
During the exhibition Nature Talks in Museum de Fundatie two canvases were shown. One with a color palette of the North Sea and one with a color palette of Antarctica. The canvases hung close behind each other and were partly translucent, so that a mixing of colors took place in the parts where both canvases overlapped. In front of the window of the huge egg, on top of the museum, it was as if you were (already) at Zwolle by the sea.
Exposed:
Nature Talks, Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle
Gallerie de Kapberg, Egmond aan de hoof
Published:
Antarktikos, a magazine made by Esther Kokmeijer
Catalog Nature Talks, Museum de Fundatie
Links:
Nature Talks, the movie. A cooperation between Museum the Fundatie and HKU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTPmPdnVGZ4
