The Metropolitan Cultural Center of Quito hosts until March an exhibition dedicated to color, seen from technology, science and culture

With other versions in other world capitals such as Caracas and Mexico City, the exhibition Colour. Knowledge of the Unseen arrives this month in the Ecuadorian capital to invite its visitors to explore the world of color from different perspectives. One of the segments incorporates creations and works by national artists that reflect the cultural and traditional meaning of color in our country, in addition to other moments that dazzle thanks to the use of technology.

“We find it very fascinating because the experience of color in Ecuador is very different from the European one. and that was clear to us. It did not make any sense to package the exhibition as it had been done in Madrid and reproduce it here”, the Spanish curator Miguel Ángel Delgado, who is also a communicator, writer and scientific disseminator, commented for this newspaper. “In Europe, for centuries there was little access to color, blue was only had by a privileged few, for example. But in Ecuador you realize that through crafts there has always been a closeness and coexistence with color that is much more everyday, it is a perspective that I love.”.

The exhibition will open until March 2023 at the Metropolitan Cultural Center (García Moreno street and Espejo passage). Admission is free and It can be visited from Wednesday to Sunday from 09:30 to 16:30, being the last admission at 16:00.

What is the concept behind this exhibition?

Color is something that apparently we all know, and yet when you delve into the nature of color, what color is, from many perspectives, scientific, cultural, psychological, there are many readings. So it seemed to us that it was a good idea to propose an exhibition that probably does not give absolute answers about color, but that does raise many questions.

And although it was planned for Madrid since before the pandemic, after COVID-19 we thought it was very necessary to also bet on color, because of what it means in terms of diversity and luminosity, of a hopeful and optimistic message. It is a mixture of reasons that made us think that it was pertinent to make this exhibition.

How is the sample designed?

The exhibition is planned as a journey. The first thing, when entering, is the most scientific or rational explanation of what color is and that means talking about Isaac Newton and his famous discovery that colors are actually locked inside sunlight. And he went further by using other prisms and putting those seven colors back together and then showing that the sum of the seven produced white, that was really revolutionary.

And from that discovery of Newton a series of advances are taking place to achieve a cataloging that reaches our days with the Pantone, with the RGB or CMYK systems, but it is a long process and so we have that journey in that first part.

What’s next?

Then we are going to change radically because we are going to confront color from a cultural point of view, that is, we abandoned science and went to the meanings of color as a cultural value and that is where we have made a greater adaptation with Ecuadorian artists and craftsBecause the experiences you have with colors depend a lot on the culture of each country. then we have a part on technology focused on efforts to reproduce color, to capture color. Since the appearance of color photography and then reproduction. And then there is a segment that we have called the emotionality of color because we look at Johann Wolfgang von Goetheanother thinker who is fundamental and who created his own theory of color and who paves the way for color psychology.

What artistic and even technological techniques make up the exhibition?

We are looking for a mix of everything. We like our exhibitions to be in some way an experience. The visitor participates in the construction of the exhibition, not exactly in an interactive sense, but yes, we constantly seek to surprise him. We use all kinds of techniques, the most traditional, graphics, there are also objects, but we use a lot, because it is inevitable when talking about color, not only audiovisual resources, but also mapping, that use light precisely. We do quite a combination. There are from more classic objects and museography, but also these technological details. And also each area, within a unit of style, has different aesthetic signs so that the entire exhibition does not look the same.

What experience do you hope visitors take away?

Above all, I would like visitors to enjoy it, that a family go from the grandparents to the children and that everyone will enjoy it, because obviously our grandparents did not have the same experience with color that children have today in an age where all colors are within our reach for very little money, and if we wanted we could dress like birds of paradise, but at the same time we use fewer and fewer colors, at least in Europe. I think there will be things that will surprise you in the sense that they will make you rethink everything you thought you knew, but I also want them to ask themselves many questions when they leave that the exhibition will not have answered, because the subject of color is endless, but surely they were questions that they did not have before entering.