Colormirror Bielefeld 1 & 2 2011

These two luminous, square forms are made from fluorescent acrylic glass by Regine Schumann, who was born in 1961. The electric blue emanates out into the darker background, and it almost doesn’t matter what it’s made of. It just glows. I imagine Schumann in her studio thinking about Dan Flavin and those other light artists. But she’s bringing something else to the party; the way that hue catches and traps the light, bending and shaping it. I can imagine the artist experimenting with different materials and light sources. The squares have a ghostly, ethereal quality. The sharp edges of the squares are almost lost in the soft light. And that blue! It's not just a color; it's an experience, a mood. It evokes a sense of calm, but also a sort of electric charge. Like all art, these pieces speak to an ongoing conversation that all artists are involved in, a lineage of mark-making and world-making. They show how creativity builds on the discoveries of the past to open new ways of seeing.