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Performing Colour|Collaborative Control


 

This particular series titled Performing Colour examines the spatialization of time and body memory in performance painting. The temporal aspect of this work, performed as one continuous motion, exposes distinctions between conceptual time and real time in relation to the process of paintingClaire Zakiewicz was blindfolded during the process while a collaborator made each colour decision by giving her coloured inks and influencing her position on the linen by clapping his hands for her to follow.

While documenting and reflecting on these live drawing experiments strange patterns became apparent. Zakiewicz drew without sight for two sets of 45 minutes (without a break in between) while listening to a piece of recorded music by Steve Reich called Music for Eighteen Musicians. Her focus was on the music and the sounds of her collaborator, which she responded to via automatic gestural mark-making. She soon lost track of her location and direction in the space. This video shows her returning to the ‘corresponding’ patches of colour when the collaborator passed pots of coloured ink as she worked for an hour and a half, blindfolded, with her attention fixed on the sounds within the room.

"I like to produced drawings in response to musical recordings because they provide a set duration as well as a structured pattern that I can listen to and repeat over again to produce a series with a similar size, density and energetic quality. When drawing music, the tension and movements affect the mark-making directly."
- Claire Zakiewicz, The Aesthetics of Improvisation in Music and the Arts, 2020


 

 

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Performing Colour, 2016
Ink on linen
87" x 72" (221 x 183 cm)

 

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Performing Colour, on display in London studio, 2020
Ink on linen
87" x 72" (221 x 183cm)
each

 

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Performing Colour, 2016
Ink on linen (detail)
87" x 72" (221 x 183 cm)
each
174" x 72" (442 x 183 cm) together

 

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Performing Colour, 2016
Ink on linen
87" x 72" (221 x 183 cm)
each
174" x 72" (442 x 183 cm) together

 

_______________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 
 

 


All content © Claire Zakiewicz
2023