Martha Clippinger Installation at the NCMA (Video)
The vibrant colors and exuberant geometric patterns in Martha Clippinger’s site-specific installations are inspired by a wide variety of artworks found in the NCMA’s collection, including twentieth century abstract paintings, Egungun masquerade costumes from Nigeria, and quilts from the American South.
As Clippinger states, “I’m interested in how formal relationships of color, shape, texture, and scale can both reflect and inform emotional states. As an abstract artist who works with geometric shapes and patterns, I’m drawn to motifs that span cultures, and I think about how such symbols can produce a universal or shared visual language.”
Vibrating Boundaries takes its title from a chapter in a book by artist Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color (1963) that explores color theory, perception and experimentation. Vibrating Boundaries refers to the optical illusion of simultaneous contrast - the phenomenon that occurs when two complementary colors of similar light intensity are placed side by side, impacting visual perception and making one color appear lighter or darker by contrast.