The Colour theme:
The themes of colour and visual perception
Colour and visual perception have been important threads which Genc Mulliqi has followed in his work from the beginning, and ‘Terra Australis’ is the latest exhibition in which the theme of colour is predominant. All the works are oil on canvas.
‘Terra Australis’
Under the tropical sun and in the reflection of the ocean, light filters everything differently.
Colours have a particular intensity in North-East Australia, the artist thinks. Endless spaces of unique ecosystems where beauty and danger coexist naturally make tropical Australia very specific in his eyes.
It is like that beautiful flower behind which hides a deadly spider. This is the place where the ocean and the desert are close to each other. The biodiversity of the tropical forest,
which is the oldest continually surviving rainforest on earth, and the Great Barrier Reef, which is considered the largest living organism on the planet, are endless sources of inspiration for everyone, and for the artist, a true discovery. He likes to think he felt like one of the early explorers,hence the title.
How could such experience be translated visually, without ending up as a simple descriptive representation?
There is obviously subjectivity in this group of works, product of an instinctive personal approach, but at the same time colour seems to be the subject of precise rationalization.
Genc Mulliqi would like to think that these works take someone to the old (and utopian) artists’ debate about colour: whether colour can be independent of form. In this case, form is possibly the most minimal, in the way of which colours are displayed. Colours are applied horizontally in several vertical, rectangular canvasses, and this seems appropriate considering the way in which the human eye is designed. These works are not based on some concrete image but are somehow just products of memory from that particular experience.