who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (statistics), 1997
9 parts, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 66.6 x 50 cm (4:3), 88.8 x 50 cm (16:9), 127.5 x 50 cm (2.55:1), edition: 1,
several forms of installation possible.
exhibition: o. t., museum liaunig, neuhaus/suha 2020.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (statistics), 1997
9 parts, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 66.6 x 50 cm (4:3), 88.8 x 50 cm (16:9), 127.5 x 50 cm (2.55:1), edition: 1,
several forms of installation possible.
right side: who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (statistics), 1997
9 parts, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 66.6 x 50 cm (4:3), 88.8 x 50 cm (16:9), 127.5 x 50 cm (2.55:1), edition: 1,
several forms of installation possible.
exhibition: günther selichar – observing systems, artmark galerie, vienna 2019.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (statistics), 1997
9 parts, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 66.6 x 50 cm (4:3), 88.8 x 50 cm (16:9), 127.5 x 50 cm (2.55:1), edition: 1,
several forms of installation possible.
exhibition: paintings now! — part I: max cole, steven rand, günther selichar, galerie schüppenhauer, cologne 1999.
left side: who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (statistics), 1997
9 parts, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 66.6 x 50 cm (4:3), 88.8 x 50 cm (16:9), 127.5 x 50 cm (2.55:1), edition: 1,
several forms of installation possible.
exhibition: a visão austríaca. positionen österreichischer gegenwartskunst, fundação calouste gulbenkian, lisbon 1998.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (4:3), 1996
series of 3, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 120 x 160 cm.
exhibition: positionen — reisen an die grenzen der malerei, museum folkwang, essen 1996.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? (6 variations), 1994 – 1995
series of 6, each twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, wooden plate, iron frame, 50 x 127.5 cm.
exhibition: günher selichar — third eye, landesgalerie linz, 2004.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green?, 1990 – 1991
twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, 103 x 285 cm.
exhibition: günther selichar, galerie peter kilchmann, zurich 1992.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green?, 1990 – 1991
twin-wall plastic panel filled with pigment, 103 x 285 cm, edition: 3.
private collection, zurich, steyr.
© photos (from top to bottom): günther selichar; günther selichar; günther selichar; günther selichar; ernst grilnberger; wim cox; michael mauracher; günther selichar; günther selichar; günther selichar; ernst grilnberger; christian schepe; günther selichar; christian schepe.
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? – editions 1993 – 2018
christoph doswald
who’s afraid of blue, red and green? is an incomplete work series, which selichar started in 1990; it discusses the most elementary conditions of images – the mediatized and painted images likewise. in this context, the artist operates with the interplay of analogy and deviation.1 who’s afraid of blue, red and green? refers to a work of the colourfield-painter barnett newman. in order to contrast the modernist dogma of the de-stijl-artist with a freed colour effect, he had painted, at the end of the sixties, a work series titled whos afraid of red, yellow and blue?, consisting of four pictures: pictures in increasing formats that confront the primary colours of painting in vertical stripes with each other. the, by selichar practiced deviation, derives from the frame conditions of the television picture – or the primary colours of other mass media such as colour photography, of the video and film. whereas the painted picture, referred to by newman, is composed of „pure“ colours, the television picture constitutes itself with the help of the combinated green. here, the auratising of painting through pure colours, there the bastardising of the television through – in terms of painting – combination colours;
… as second analogue functions the image- and colour field proportions, which selichar uses in this work scene: from the first standardized television frame format to a virtual panorama television format up to the cinemascope format, all frame sizes, which are available for the present-day eye as standardized frame conditions. with the visualizing of the workaday perspective, the artist not only infiltrates the aesthetical paradigm of the golden section, of the idealized since „natural“ format conditions, but also determines to what an extent the new media have departed from the roots of the picture.
… by filling the pigment into plexiglas doubling egp slats (double, stayed acrilic glass), the artist not only invents a new bonding agent, but also suggests, through the striped layering, the net structure of the television monitor. selichar applies the reverse method of the mediatization in terms of baudrillard: practised in the reversal of the image derivation a continuously transforming self-adulation, that despite of its conceptional concision hardly makes possible apparent self referentialness and associative logic, but on the contrary refers to the accelerating relativity of cause and effect of our consciousness when dealing with (art)-images.
1 uli bohnen: between and across the media, naturally!, in: uli bohnen, christoph doswald, walter seitter: günther selichar. suchbilder. (salzburg/valència: 1993/94), p. 14.
from: christoph doswald: der ursprung des bildes. günther selichar, in: gerhard finckh (ed.): positionen. reisen an die grenzen der malerei. (essen: museum folkwang, 1996). and in: norbert pfaffenbichler, sandro droschl: abstraction now. (graz: edition camera austria, 2004).