BRAM FABER

Dazzle Painting

19 January – 28 February, 2025

PS Projectspace is pleased to present Bram Faber's inaugural solo exhibition.

The title Dazzle Painting originates from the painting of military fleets with complex geometric black-and-white patterns in the first half of the 20th century. For camouflage, to create confusion by disrupting the contours of the ships with the effects of the patterns.

In his Dazzle Paintings, Faber uses this concept not so much to disrupt contour or form but to temper pure bright colors with a camouflage effect by placing black-and-white painted areas in front of them. Greying occurs through the tilting of the color and black-and-white areas in relation to each other and the resulting shadows and uneven light incidence. The paintings can be hung on the wall or placed on the table, either standing or lying down. There is no top or bottom, nor left or right.

The Dazzle Paintings are a sequel to earlier work by Bram Faber: 48 Colors from 2021. This series consists of eight paintings in which the six primary colors all appear eight times, in the order of the colors of the rainbow and with variations on that order. (Day)light admission regulates the intensity of the color.

In the current exhibition at PS, alongside the Dazzle Paintings, a number of other works can also be seen, where the relationship between, on the one hand, the unmixed color and, on the other hand, black and white is addressed in a similar manner. Presentations of pure color, each time disrupted by an externally imposed black and white.

Bram Faber makes use of rules, methods, and systems, such as the use of DIN formats, numerical sequences, proportions, and color theory, but also allows influences and observations that refer to societal or social phenomena, popular culture, and science, which are not solely derived from art. He maintains an eye for the painting as an object and challenges the reality of the works by engaging in a play with their appearances. The dialectic that this entails along with its sometimes paradoxical outcomes, is not shied away from but is precisely used as a driving force, continually bringing forth a different perspective and yielding new research material.

Bram Faber lives and works in Amsterdam and has been exhibiting since 1986.

The exhibition can be visited on Thursdays 14 – 17 hrs. and by appointment.