McEvoy Arts’ fifth anniversary exhibition Color Code celebrates color and its vibrant expressions in the arts. Modern and contemporary artworks from the McEvoy Family Collection join four new commissions by Bay Area artists Sadie Barnette, Angela Hennessy, Clare Rojas, and Zio Ziegler to showcase how we bring color into our lives.
These works speak to various color theories that abound in science and the arts. In ancient Greece, Aristotle held that deities sent down color from the heavens as celestial rays. In the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton’s experiments with prisms led him to theorize that the real basis for visible color is in light itself, linking color systems to musical notation. For numerous visual artists, filmmakers, and designers, color is a both a means and an end. It is a tool for communicating stories, values, and ideas, as well as an expression of beauty, pleasure, and feeling in and of itself.
Color Code is accompanied by Visible Light, a program of short films in McEvoy Arts’ Screening Room about the relationship between light and color in the moving image; The Fifth Edition, a special anniversary newspaper showcasing color in the graphic arts; and workshops hosted by color specialists illuminating its important role in arts and design.