Sabine Müller
catalogue text in: Dorothee Joachim, exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum Alte Post, Mülheim/Ruhr 2001

When the intensity of light sinks below a certain level, the eye is no longer able to recognise colours. Each night at a given moment the colour spectrum transforms into a no less differentiated scale of grey tones (and the next morning the same sequence is repeated in reverse order). Imagine if one could seize this very moment of change-over from seeing colour to seeing black and white, or if one could even switch back and forth at will, cautiously approaching that infinitesimal gradation of light which is just necessary to perceive colour. With the help of artificial light this experiment could easily be carried out. Who would still – or already – see which colours, and when? Which sensations would this moment of re-recognising or no-longer-recognising colours bring about in each individual case? Such an exercise would certainly result in altered awareness of the significance of colours, their nature, their power, warmth, energy, temperature, their influence on the feelings, the body, the spirit, the soul.

Do flowers really shine with a greater intensity of colour in the fall than in the spring? Or is it merely the oncoming pallor with its whitish haze of early morning mist, herald of a colourless season, which causes the red of the dahlias to glow as if lit up from within?

(translated by John Lambert)