Moan

2011

While visiting Paris, I took a black & white, analogue photograph of one of Rothko’s famous red paintings. This action was planned and inspired by an essay of Donald Judd, in which he stated the following:

If one says “Red” (the name of a color)
and there are 50 people listening,
it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

I scanned the negatives and the picture turned out to be a deep black monochrome. My humble addition consisted out of putting a tiny pixel on it, made with a rainbow gradient (a generic gradient found in every version of Photoshop). With this action, the photograph was now not only a theoretical red and a visible black, but it also contained all the (digital) colors imaginable.

I’ve printed my edited photograph on a plotter printer which uses a roll of paper. As a result, you have to straighten your printed paper afterwards to take the curve out of it. While hanging my photograph, I decided I liked the curved paper better than the straightened out version.

It looked like the photograph moaned, which for me, worked perfect for a Rothko.