It’s the second week and so it’s time for the second color. As I spent last week in Italy expect to see less Berlin, but more sun!

Invisible Border - Mad Architect @Milan Design Week

April 29: ORANGE

Long-stay prisoncell at prison/TBS facility Overmaze @Milan Design Week

Isn’t orange a bit of a weird choice?

I know, I know, orange is not one of the most beloved colour; when ending up on this topic most of the people are like: “mm, no, I don’t really like orange, it looks like dirty yellow or washed-out brown”…well, it is my favourite colour! And it also happens to be my new hair dye.

Besides it is the complimentary colour of blue (last week colour, if you haven’t read it: https://bpigs.com/diaries/interns-diary/intern-s-diary-1-blue) and its exact opposite in meaning; if one is sadness and melancholy, the other is associated with amusement and gaiety. Vincent Van Gogh once wrote to his brother: “there is no orange without blue”.

I have always loved orange and its energy, maybe it is connected to my kindergarten class, named the orange butterflies, or maybe not, the fact is that as a kid I was supporting the Dutch team because of the colour of its jersey…yes, I know, I was probably going a little bit too far with the orange obsession (by the way, two days ago was Koningsdag/King’s Day in the Netherlands, so this fits perfectly with the colour choice). Now I just “limit” myself to having only orange umbrellas, brushes and toothbrushes.

But what has orange to do with Berlin?

Orange is everywhere in Berlin! It is, among other things, the colour of a popular supermarket, different U-Bahn stations, some construction-work pipes, and of course of the omnipresent trash bins, on which you can read “so orange ist nur Berlin”.

To talk more about the art side, just yesterday I had the chance to enjoy a nice and colourful exhibition with works by Michael Laube at Kuckei + Kuckei and I gladly noticed that orange was very much present.

Few random facts about the colour orange:
-Prisoners are dressed in orange so they are easier to see in case of an escape
-The shades of orange are more than 40
-Black boxes on planes are actually bright orange
-In Buddhism it is the colour of illumination and it was elected for monks’ tunics by Buddha himself
-It is a symbol of gluttony in the Christian religion

Shreds of accountability - Mari Bastashevski @Haus der Kulturen der Welt

Famous artworks with orange as predominant colour:
-Orange and Yellow, Mark Rothko, 1956
-The third, Barnett Newman, 1962
-Orange Marilyn, Andy Warhol, 1964
-Made in California, Ed Ruscha, 1971
-The gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 1979-2005

@Eigen + Art Lab