When Vladimir organised his trip to Mongolia, his idea was to work on the subject of colour blindness. The particularity of deuteranopia is that colours are perceived differently: yellows are seen as green, reds as brown, blues as pink and greens as yellow and orange.

Since Vladimir had to gradually learn the correspondence between standard colours and his perception from the age of six, he planned to make photographs that would succeed in rendering this double vision.

 

How could the two images be combined in a single support?

 

The artist conceived of printing them on aluminium plates, which, on the one hand, show the colour as perceived by the majority of people, and on the other, as seen by the Deuteranopians. With the seven pieces exhibited at the Unlimited Art Studio Gallery, he has given tangible form to the etymology of the word deuteranopia: second ('deuteros') and view ('opsis'). The landscapes of the Gobi Desert, with their vast expanses of land without major relief, provided an excellent basis for the project. Vladimir's vision is just as real as the standard vision. His discovery enriches us because it reveals a world that cannot be seen through normal perception. It requires interaction: the viewer has to move around to experience the two possible visions. The artistic approach is thus part of kinetic art. Here, it is not the works that are mobile. It is the colours that change when the viewer moves. In this way, Vladimir pushes back the limits of photographic art, which, in essence, fixes an image, stopping it at the precise moment of the shot. He energises it by bringing it into a third dimension, which is not only relief (the slats), but also movement.

The photograph leaves the status of a frozen reproduction; it is the viewer's perception that becomes the centre of the work. 

 

 

Written by Corinne Charles

Curator of The Exhibition

Doctor of Letters & Art Historian