Lichtundfire’s “Lemon Sky” show

Lemon, or gold–in essence, yellow–brings forth connotations of brilliance, wealth, and youth. Gallery director Priska Juschka at Lichtundfire conceptualizes this powerful color, yellow, as an extreme statement in chroma–and it dominates unyieldingly. Yellow is aflame as it pierces through our surroundings and remains an unforgettable hue in our recollection of imagery. On an existentially (subconscious)unconscious level, I believe, we all revere, and yet fear, yellow, as it is the color associated with the sun. Our very existence was borne of the yellow star we know as the sun. A sun that keeps us alive but also could do grave damage to our world–and ultimately–will consume our planet: as a whole.

Yellow, in my estimation, is the primary of primaries.

The impression of the memory of a chromatic scale arranged as an emotional abstraction is what Vian Borchert’s four paintings “Lemon Zest,” “Limoncello,” “Transcendent,” and “Lemon Sky” convey.  We might experience an ongoing biography in quarters, as each painting could represent a decade or so of the artist’s life–as we might see this life in its development, in the compositional shape of colors. The yellow in each picture is strategically placed, indicating the level of awareness and wisdom the artist had at that point in life. The yellow, representing the actual true self’s identity, could indicate the location of that true self within the boundaries of the artist’s perception, as manifested within the boundaries of the painting itself.

Joyce Pommer’s “Paper & Fabric,” a mixed media work with acrylic and collage, presents what could be imagined as a distorted family genealogy. The yellow circles, inhabiting what appears to be a free-hand graph, surround the subtle indications of what could resemble people’s silhouettes.  The white patches within the graph make the viewer feel as if there was a deterioration of events, of memory partially lost. The yellow is a source of a resonant reference of time and familial stability (or instability)for us as well.

When juxtaposed with Philip Gerstein’s painting “Master Stroke” and Joyce Pommer’s “Paper & Fabric,” Sandra Gottlieb’s photograph “Vertical #20”, from her Seascape Series, and one of three seascapes in the exhibition, resonates of yellow at the horizon; this becomes alchemically realized when, within our outer periphery, we obliquely … Click here to read more