Rainbow

Rainbow began with a playful question that Jan Andriesse asked himself: ‘What is the most beautiful natural phenomenon a queen can look at?’ Having pondered this for months, he arrived at a surprisingly simple answer: a rainbow. Yet in this immense painting, Andriesse does not show us a depiction of a rainbow, but rather what a rainbow is. By allowing the bands of colour to transition imperceptibly into one another, he has made it impossible to say where one colour ends and the next begins.

The painting was created in sunlight and, based on the depicted effect of light, seems to represent the transition from morning to afternoon: the moment when warm tones slowly emerge amid the still more prevalent cool tones. In order to best perceive that effect, Rainbow must be displayed in natural light as well. Direct artificial light is too static and creates a ‘frame’ around the work. Daylight, on the other hand, is more evenly suffused and flows together with the painting. It makes the surface seem to vibrate with light and transparent hues.

The ‘stripes’ of the rainbow have been applied layer by layer and have a matte effect thanks to the crushed marble powder that Andriesse mixed into his paints. This creates a velvety matte texture that absorbs and diffuses light rather than reflecting it sharply. He used a wiper to remove the evidence of brushstrokes, resulting in a transparent surface in which all texture and every trace of craftsmanship – and even materiality – has been stripped away. The idea was that the viewer will look past the paint itself to see the phenomenon of coloured light. Through his technique, Andriesse is able to make a fleeting phenomenon of nature tangible while at the same time preserving its ephemeral nature.

Although the painting invites us to come closer, to examine its layered surface, it also demands to be viewed from a distance. From further away, our eyes struggle to come to grips with what we see – but nowhere is there a point on which we can focus. The resulting experience is intense and highly sensory in nature.