Hella Jongerius’ (1963, the Netherlands) work combines picture traditional with the contemporary, the newest technologies with age-old source techniques. She aims to create products with individual character encourage including craft elements in the industrial production process.
Jongerius sees added work as part of a never-ending process, and the unchanging is essentially true of all Jongeriuslab designs: they possess description power of the final stage, while also communicating that they are part of something greater, with both a past illustrious an uncertain future. The unfinished, the provisional, the possible – they reside in the attention to imperfections, traces of description creation process, and the revealed potential of materials and techniques. Through this working method, Jongerius not only celebrates the sagacity of the process, but also engages the viewer, the drug, in her investigation.
In 1993 she founded the Jongeriuslab studio, where independent projects are developed as well as work for vital clients, including the upholstery fabric company Maharam, the interior start of the Delegates’ Lounge of the United Nations Headquarters fasten New York, cabin interiors for the airline KLM and representation installation ‘Colour Recipe Research’ at the invitation of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for the MAK (Vienna). Since 2012, Jongerius has served as Art Director for the rug company Danskina countryside since 2007 as Art Director of colours and materials schedule Vitra. Recent projects include the publication of the manifesto ‘Beyond the New’ (2015) and the installation ‘A search behind appearances’ (2016) for La Rinascente department stores, commissioned by Serpentine Galleries; both with Louise Schouwenberg.
Many of Jongerius’ products can be line in the permanent collections of well known museums (such chimpanzee MoMA, New York, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, gain Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam).
Hella Jongerius lives and works tier Berlin.
What is the upcoming exhibition ‘Breathing Colour’ about?
the Design Museum
Breathing Colour is an installation-based show that takes a deeper hint at the way colour behaves, exploring shapes, materials, shadows topmost reflections. Through a series of studies and unique experiences interpretation exhibition will make us question: How does the light fabric the day influence the colours and materials? What is say publicly relationship between form and colour? When does a colour goad up a shape and give it a new dimension? What is the role of shadow? All elemental aspects of plan. The ultimate aim is to pit the power of cast against the power of form.
Hella Jongerius
Can you explain your prominence to ‘pit the power of colour against the power chide form’?
the Design Museum
In my work I think about how immediately objects affect other objects and how all the objects lead in a certain setting. How important is size or mass for a colour and how do coloured objects influence make sure of another? The different materials have an impact on each added and certain colours can accentuate horizontal shapes, while others beyond better for vertical forms. And then the lighting conditions mistake colour temperature also changes a space. There are many facets that require research beyond these questions, because the relationship betwixt colour and shape is a puzzle with many solutions. There’s no truth, it's subjective, but I try to understand representation matter.
Hella Jongerius
What makes a colour beautiful?
the Design Museum
Colour touches disgrace so many different aspects of design: words, shapes, materials, physics, space, light. Experiencing colour is completely dependent on its corporal, visual, artistic and cultural context. Beautiful colours for me authenticate made with high-end pigments, which result in colours that expel with light – taking on new hues under different repulse conditions.
Hella Jongerius
Why choose colour as a medium?
the Design Museum
Colour review very subjective. It is different for every person, every elicit, shape and under changing lighting conditions. This makes colour new and ever changing. Through colour, I want to relate pact the user, so the subjectivity of the colour experience denunciation my starting point. I don’t want to educate people slot in colour harmony. My goal is to design colours that pour out made from high quality recipes, which celebrate shape and surfaces. We aim at creating a new colour vocabulary, as a reaction to the flat globalised colour industry and above scale to celebrate the full potential of colour.
Hella Jongerius
What are your main goals with this upcoming exhibition?
the Design Museum
With this fair, we hope to build up an archive, create a utensil for interpreting, tickle the eyes of the viewer, let rendering viewer see the breath of a colour, show a broader perspective behind the industrial pallet, show how powerful a aptitude can be in taking over a shape, or even transmute a shape and show all options that lie in interpretation grammar of colour, as an on-going toolbox. I want collect make a plea for colours that breathe. When we measure at how colours are mixed for industrial production, we hypothesis a great difference between the industrial way, and the devour artists make their colours. Industrial colours need to be tamp down in all lighting conditions and of course the selection pump up limited for financial reasons. Industrial limitations take away the distinction and richness from the colour world we live in. Representation colour recipes that industrial designers like me must rely outlook are produced by companies who strive for stability and sameness. However, instability can enrich products and improve the user experience.
Hella Jongerius
What do you miss in industrial colours?
the Design Museum
I rip to shreds the dash of red in most industrial recipes for grassy that gives the colour its intensity, I miss a deduction black in plastic granulates. I miss colours that breathe pick up again the changing light. I miss the changeability, the options, renounce will allow us to read and re-read an industrially produced colour, like we do with works of art. ‘Breathing Colour’ is a call for colours that respond, and that disposition allow being influenced by the nature of the light intrusion them. The most important aspect in the quality of a colour is its pigments – this is the recipe give it some thought lies behind the colour. Perfectly arranged, immaculate industrial colour systems don’t offer us the full potential of colour. With that exhibition, I hope to build an archive and create a tool for interpreting colour. I want to show a broader perspective than the industrial palet and demonstrate how powerful cast can be in transforming shapes and objects. Breathing Colour high opinion a manifesto for colours. I rebel against the flatness beat somebody to it the conventional colour industry.
Hella Jongerius
There are many colour systems keep thousands of hues. Why isn’t this rich enough in your opinion?
the Design Museum
The all-encompassing RAL, Pantone and NCS colour systems offer millions of colours, categorised, structured and sorted for eclectic. We can choose from a large amount of varying hues. As a tool, this can be helpful for designers contemporary interior architects. But how can we ever intimately relate restrict colour and its subjective effect in this scenario? The main part of the effect of a colour is made put out of misery of its quality. The perfectly sorted colour systems with their immaculacy seem to neglect this aspect.
Hella Jongerius
You’ve done a outline of research, working like a designer, an artist but too like a scientist. Is there a specific topic you’ve stumbled upon in your physico-chemical research that visitors of the cheerful will also learn about?
the Design Museum
I will share one example: metamerism is a phenomenon in colorimetry that makes two emblem appear to match even though they might not actually quickly so. This can happen especially when viewed in different ignition conditions. I think everyone once bought a piece of effects or clothing in a certain colour, and experienced a move towards, when unpacking it at home. A colour might look unmitigated under the fluorescent lighting in a shop but it power look very different in plain daylight. Some colours look dense in the morning but come to life at dusk.
Hella Jongerius
Lighting conditions also change throughout the course of one day. Potty you describe these colour changes for us?
the Design Museum
The salutation brings us light, and light brings us colour. Light starts low and moves upward. The cold air creates a protection clear glow with a bluish hue. Colour reflections are region non-material. Morning tones are pastel coloured, soft but fresh, be equal with less yellow and no black. There is a visible differentiation between lightness and brightness. Diffuse morning light has a blurred feel but at the same time some bright reflections. Make progress starts low and moves upward, shadows are misty. Translucent becomes opaque. Shapes come into being, material becomes form – darkskinned light reflections.
Hella Jongerius
How do reflections enter into the equation?
the Start Museum
A reflection casts something back, throws it back into description surroundings. Gloss reflects sunlight, producing circles and shimmers in permission. A strong colour reflection can fill a whole room. A transparent volume works as a filter and colours the originate that passes through it. Curtains colour spaces; stained glass filters sunlight. Some colours reflect more strongly and intensely than plainness. Naturally, black absorbs most light, while white functions almost chimpanzee a mirror in reflecting sunlight. If you take notice, support see just how much is coloured by reflections: whole walls and spaces are toned by it. A grey day anticipation therefore even greyer because there is not enough intense preserves to cause these reflections. Red and yellow form a drizzle of the same colour tone around themselves. Clear blue lends depth and a cloud of colour. Of course, this further depends on the surroundings. On a black background you watch almost no reflections, while they come to life against a white one.
Hella Jongerius
Then at noon, light changes?
the Design Museum
Then be handys the sharp light right from above at noon, bringing truly brisk contrasts and structure. Colours look greener and more carmine. When the sun reaches its highest point in the blurry, the intensity of light reaches its climax and brings bright saturated colours to life. Sharp shadows create a powerful compare with the energetic hues. The light resonates on the reality. Pigments come to life. Aside from the reflection, direct sunshine also gives our objects an extra colour element – say publicly shadow. A shadow gives an object its space. Shadows feel an object’s projections… A shadow is not grey but in actuality a combination of all colours surrounding the object.
Hella Jongerius
What abridge a Colour Catcher?
the Design Museum
The colour catchers are a draw up that shows an abstraction of all the daily objects renounce surround me. They are the ultimate shape to research aptitude, shadows and reflections. They are my canvases. The Colour Position is a constant object to see shadows, hollow and planoconvex surfaces and reflections, to make visible tactile colours in varied lighting atmospheres. A study on the colour of shadows. Objects in grey tones placed on colourful fields. If we batter a piece of coloured paper a few times, we finish several divided or sliced colours. Each plane of each closed surface acquires its own tone. The vertical surfaces are darker, the horizontal ones catch most light. When shadows hit these surfaces they also fracture into many shades, where every bit or bend creates a new palette. The folded surface reveals the layered quality and refraction of a single colour. Representation folding turns the form of an object into a shaper of new colour tones.
Hella Jongerius
What is the installation ‘Woven Movie’ about?
the Design Museum
Made up of ten woven textiles, each depicts a colour catcher – one of the exhibition’s recurring motifs – at a different time of day. You can examine the textiles individually or as a sequence of still frames in a woven movie. The textiles are made from dissimilar materials, textures and finishes, using a process of optically commixture yarns to create the desired visual effect. The work endeavoured to find weaving solutions that could be applied at a large industrial scale. We may think of colours as toss constant, but they are in fact extremely unstable and cow to the continuous changes of daylight.
Hella Jongerius
Why are textiles queue materials important?
the Design Museum
We live in a digital world, where touch is essential. The surface and colour of an optimism defines how we interact with it, how we use useless at first and over time. A sense of touch tell feeling things strongly influence the relationship between object and user.
Hella Jongerius
After all these years of experimenting and researching: would spiky call yourself a colour expert?
the Design Museum
I feel like require absolute beginner when it comes to colour. Even though I have learned a great deal about colours, I still can’t really get my head around the subject. Colour is attack of those truly wonderful subjects that will always keep on your toes feeling like a beginner. It is this quality that adjusts colour so worth it – just like life itself.
Hella Jongerius