It is hard to tell why we have come to associate fire with the colour red since it has other colours also. It might be, perhaps, because it provokes a strong reaction. The whiteness of snow elicits a different response to the redness of fire. First colour we see as babies is black, then white followed by red.

 

Out of the four Greek classical basic elements (air, fire, water and earth) fire is the one whose material qualities is more different. It is not, for example, an object that can be picked and moved from one place to another nor does it change overtime in the same way as the others. Fire is energy in the form of heat and light. When an organic material, such as wood, for example, releases a large amount of thermal energy, it combusts and what we see as fire is the ‘incandescence’ of those gases. As the combustion dies the fire follows. Snow is frozen water in the form of ice crystals bunched together, without impurities, and ice crystals are translucent. When light particles (photons) travel through crystals, they interact with their structure and change direction. A light particle entering a crystal in one direction exits in another and since snow is the sum of many crystals, this process repeats itself many times. The bouncing of the colours of the photons outward in many directions mixes them and combines them resulting in the colour white.

 

The title of the exhibition Neither as red as fire nor as white as snow forms a mental image that does not unveil itself by openly declaring what it is. It is not this-not this, the mind bounces back and forth. French philosopher Gilles Deleuze talks about ‘thinking-movement’ as that which propels the mind to understand things through relations. For him, there is ‘action, perception and affection’ and each of these agents takes over the others and interprets them. Interestingly, classical Greek philosophy also believed that fire, air, earth and water picked up from each other in a way much like an interaction; earth rising out of water, air over earth and the sun, fire, above all.

 

Neither as red as fire nor as white as snow takes a particular approach toward the idea of how we construct relations, specially our relationship with our surroundings. The exhibition takes place in Black Maritxu, an open field in the locality of Arrieta (Bizkaia, Spain), and the works are displayed in platforms raised above the ground. The artworks co-exist with the landscape and the two worlds cohabit for a short period. Even though they might never come to understand each other or relate to one another directly.

 

8x4. Is an ongoing project and mobile exhibition space that consists of one or more sheets of material MDF size 8x4 feet and houses group exhibitions.

 

Jasone Miranda-Bilbao