International Klein Blue, According to Google Image

While walking through the Julio Fine Arts Gallery, the pieces of Invisible Structures on display are overwhelmingly made up of various shades of gray. However, there is a single piece that is not like the rest. International Klein Blue, According to Google Image can be seen in the small room to the viewer’s left immediately upon walking into the gallery. This blue projection, put together by Jon Malis, catches viewers’ eyes as they enter through the gallery doors.  Many visitors will often view this projection and ask themselves, “What is this supposed to be?”

First, who is Klein and why does he have a color named after him? Yves Klein was a French artist born in the 1900’s. He is well-known for “IKB” which stands for International Klein Blue. Klein developed this distinct color with the help of Edouard Adam, a paint supplier in Paris, with the express purpose of making a vibrant blue like no other. Klein would end up registering IKB as a trademark color in 1957. The majority of Yves Klein’s work incorporated this color.

There is something special about this color which is that it is impossible to be recreated in a digital form, or so Jon Malis hypothesizes. It must be viewed in person to truly experience the breathtaking beauty and intensity of the color. This has certainly not stopped people from trying to recreate this color digitally, which is what Malis is highlighting in this work. Malis has done quite a bit of research on IKB, and especially at the widely-varying color profiles of digitized works by Yves Klein. He has measured the colourmetric data of online and accessible IKB paintings by Klein. More specifically, he studied 30 digital images of 29 paintings. The images that you can see now projected in the gallery are a result of Malis’ research. International Klein Blue, According to Google Image highlights the different tones, shades, and hues of blue images claiming to be IKB on the internet, another example of the ways ‘Invisible Structures’ affect our experiences of art viewing.