Lot 510 D

“Fangor´s spatial dynamics take place somewhere between the viewer and the canvas, at a point in mid-air where the eye perceives. Any attempt to focus on the blurred and fluid images provokes an immediate activation of color and contour which disintegrate and reintegrate and, like an after-image, elude the eye's fixation. When the eye finally penetrates this kinetic field to settle upon the canvas, the viewer realizes that the colors and configurations he sees at a distance are not pigmentary hues and factual shapes but illusory foreground images engendered by the activity of perception. It is here that the above definition of optical illusions rings true: the eye´s perceptions do not stand up when their implications are tested.
The interaction of color is the key to Fangor's illusory space. Problems presented by color interaction although not new in the history of art are particulary ambiguous in the context of contemporary art. Albers is, of course, the present-day master of the theory of color interaction, and one of Albers' premises is applied by Fangor: that of equal light intensity. The equal light intensity of two hues, explains Albers in his book Interaction of Color, provokes the dissolution of forms. In comparison to a painter like Albers, Fangor introduces a fourth coefficient to the existing three of pigment, optical imprint and psychic impression. Fangor's fourth is the active density of space located between the eye and the colored surface.” (Margit Rowell, Introduction, in: Fangor, Ausst.Kat. Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1970, S.12).