About us

Mike and Madeleine Bülow’s work, is a mixed media work, and consists of several working steps, which deals with the coincidence, flowing paint, and the laws of nature. In the process, intuitively explore the emerging small paint sculptures, in three-dimensional space, in a liquid. Important in their work is the perspective, and the view of the object that is created. Because each perspective, lets the subject, appear differently, for example, by light and shadow. The coincidence is thereby a fixed constant, to repeat nothing, to innovatively re-create, and compositions of colors and shapes emerge, which can not be conceived. They create a basic situation, by introducing paint into a liquid. Later, their intervention is minimal and limited to a few drops of paint that are intuitively brought into the action.

However, it is not, as in automatism, without intention. It is the intention and tasks position that determines the outcome of their work. This sharpens the senses to capture the emerging through artistic photography. Thus, for example, music of Claude Debussy, but also electronic music becomes the subject. But also visual events are used for research, examined and compared. Thus the photographs of the Hubble telescope serve, likewise for intuitive interpretation, their work. With the music it concerns to make sounds visually visible in form and color and to interpret. Their work is completely different from Kandinsky’s, which is on a two-dimensional plane. Mike and Madeleine’s work, in the process of creation, is just like sounds moving through space, a three-dimensional sculpture, of paint, also moving through space, and currently can only be made visible through photography or video. Since these objects are too fleeting and too small to be captured by the naked eye.

Artist statement

Our work is not just about beautiful colourful pictures. No, it is much more an exploration similar to the exploration of the universe, with the telescope, only that we create this universe that we explore ourselves! We act intuitively with what happens, what we see. The intentional coincidence is a fixed constant in our work, in order not to become predictable, and to give what happens its own evolution. In doing so, we uncover an otherwise invisible reality that would remain hidden to the human mind and eye. Our work involves several steps, based on the creation of a situation through paint in a liquid, to which we then have to react, change and accept. This situation is then photographed and printed as a unique fine art print. The exploration of space, in which paint unfolds freely, and only through slight intervention, in which we intuitively and consciously add new drops of paint to influence the situation, gives us the opportunity to create something, and to participate in creation. The question arises why space, form and colour, but also light and shadow work in certain constellations. It seems that nature has a template of forms for this. Since recognisable shapes emerge again and again.

Art is an activity that must be experimental and open!

Coincidence on purpose!

How important is chance in art? I maintain that chance in art is one of the most important challenges of our time. Otherwise we will drown in repetitions! The art market is full of repetitions, in slightly different form and color. Innovations are those that are triggered by chance and are accompanied by an incredible creative force that we usually cannot grasp with our minds. Just as one can trust that a tree will grow from a seed, one must also trust that something new will emerge from an intention. The very intention to create something new is the seed that will grow through chance and exploration. Expecting a result clouds the view of what is actually in front of you! Also, the misconception of control must be set aside, because just the angle of view, can make an object seem changed. Something new, which was created by chance, must be recognized and viewed from all perspectives.  It is important to look at it intuitively with the feeling and not with the mind.

An artist should be an explorer who finds the invisible!

Foto: Manfred Behrens

Mike & Madeleine Bülow with G.C. Rump art historian and theorist.

Text by Gerhart Charles Rump

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Charles_Rump 

The artists Mike & Madeleine Bülow have chosen  „The Symphonies of Colors ℠„ as their main title of their ongoing series of works. The colour body of her works is suspended in a liquid, and then photographed, and then selected, printed and presented. What the viewers see is, indeed, a symphony of colours, incorporating musical principles (other arists have done that, too, and composers have attempted to conjure up images in our minds), but the colours are not spread out on a flat and even surface, and they are seen as 3D, creating their own space, their own universe if you so wish.

The colour hues are different from what you experience in everyday life. Notwithstanding their unique character, they still do remind you of the things you know, you have seen before, and you are sure to see in the future. The reason for this is that Mike & Madeleine Bülow rely on certain principles of our perception, and of our biology, too. Every single colour, in whatever tone it may be clad, corresponds with the form, meaning that the same colour in a different form will have a different effect.

This is so because form is unchanging, it is a character of the material thing. Its colour, on the contrary, is not. Colour is an optical effect. An optical effect working directly on and with with our psyche and our experiences. This can easily be demonstrated by placing what in our everyday use would be called a red ball in a box and green late is shed on it, The colour, which in broad daylight appears to us as red, will change. But the form of the ball will, of course, not.

Some of the contrasts Mike & Madeleine Bülow will inevitably use are highly alerting. They do refer to biology, because some animals use those contrast like red and black or yellow and black or vivid bright colours, in order to fend off their predators. A frog in the Brazilian rain forest, brightly coloured, with vivid contrasts of colour in his skin, signalises to its predators: „I am poisonous, keep off.“ In the same way other animals use those contrasts to signalize „I do not taste good“ or „I am dangerous.“ We instinctively re-experience those effects, because we still have a heritage of those perceptive elements inside ourselves.

But there is, of course, more to it. Their main objective is to probe into the relationship between colour and form. Plus, of course, the effects these relations have on our perception, and therefore our emotions. When  Josef Albers investigated the interrelationship of colour and form, he chose a defined area, on a flat surface, and chosen an abstract albeit geometrical form. Mike & Madeleine Bülow go about their business in a completely different way, Renouncing the flat surface and therefore elevating painting into the third dimension, one might say that their works are sculptures. But that is only true in the process of creation. The images of Mike & Madeleine Bülow are photographs, and therefore 2-D representations of 3-D objects, thus connecting to the tradition of representing space on a flat surface, which has been so admirably described in John White‘s book „The birth and rebirth of pictorial space“.

The gist of it all is that Mike & Madeleine Bülow create a universe of colours incorporating musical principles, biological principles, aiming at our psyche through the architecture of our perception. The range of our aesthetics is, in their works, constantly being widened and goes on to explore new dimensions.

Video contributions explaining our work and vision.

A crucial but significant difference separates our work from simple coloured clouds in a Tank of water. It is a vision of making music visible that drives us to refine our work more and more to achieve a visual experience of music „The Symphonies of Colors“. The processes are similar in the creation phase. However, we have also changed, adapted and perfected these processes.