Galleri Image presents the publication The Color of Water by the American visual artist Sarah Schorr.
In addition to photographic pieces by Sarah Schorr the book contains text by Elizabeth Avedon and Anne Marie Pahuus in English and Danish. The book is released in parallel to Schorr’s solo exhibition of the same name in Galleri Image and was printed at Narayana Press in a signed edition of 300.
The Color of Water
The Color of Water by Sarah Schorr is an investigation of one of our life sustaining elements: water. What is the color of water? Opaque, transparent or translucent, entering water can delineate both a physical passage and a metaphysical pathway. Silver to black to emerald green: water is often not blue. Sometimes the sea is a rolling red from deep sea algae. Assisted by the waterscape, these transitions open us to different reflective experiences, sparking introspection about attention, physicality, and mobility in our media-saturated landscape.
At dusk and dawn, colors fluctuate into metallic, iridescent hues. Along the coast, the angle of illumination shifts. Colors stimulate mood; water becomes reflection. In 1814, Abraham Werner published a nomenclature organizing color around minerals to make a “standard.” extending these charts to metallics, Sarah Schorr opens the grid to the infinite task of charting the ephemeral emotion in color. The question becomes: how does the heart tint the lens and complicate the standard?
Designing the Book
In form, this is an accordion book, inspired by an all-season stairway to the sea on the Danish coast.
This book is meant to be held.
This book is meant to be unfurled as it stretches out like a vast ocean.
In organization, this book is inspired by a geologist’s early attempt to chart and name the colors.
This book is reversible and conceals or reveals the depth of cool or warm color charts.
This book is ordered by observations of color: cerulean blue to metallic orange then crossing over to silvery oceanic green and all the shades between.
In fabrication, this book is informed by longstanding, analog handcrafted bookmaking techniques as well as by the inventions and interventions of digital technology.
This book takes its shape from intensive collaboration over Zoom between Denmark and the US during the COVID-19 lockdown.
This book is formed from the conscious melding of physical and digital processes, composite images sparked by the understated beauty of human form in water and light enhanced by fleeting color studies.
The Color of Water is available at Galleri Image for 240 DKK
In addition to the regular printing, the book is published in a limited collector’s series in handcrafted boxes by Ermonis in Germany for 440 DKK
Materials and Scale
Paper: arctic volume white 250g
22 folds, 23 pages (both sides)
size: 12.7 cm x 12.7 cm
About the Artist
Sarah Schorr is an American artist based in Aarhus, Denmark. A captivation with light, water, and modes of embodied contemplation runs through her work. Schorr’s art has been internationally exhibited since her first solo show at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City and has recently been honored by the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards at the Fotonostrum Gallery in Barcelona, Spain (2020), the director’s prize at the Griffin Museum in Winchester, USA (2020), and a Terra Foundation Fellowship residency in Giverny, France (2021).
After the exhibition at Galleri Image, Schorr’s The Color of Water exhibition and book will travel to the Northern Photographic Centre in Finland in 2022.
You can visit the artist’s website for more information www.sarahschorr.com
You can read more about the exhibition here.
The book and the exhibition are supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, the A.P. Møller Foundation, The City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen), the Augustinus Foundation, and The William Demant Foundation.
Photo: Sarah Schorr
Photo: Sarah Schorr
