Room with Rainbow
/5
- Room with Rainbow
- Raum mit Regenbogen
- 1982
- 4 color photographs, each 24,5 × 17 cm
For “Room with Rainbow,” Lois Weinberger painted the walls and furniture inside a room at his rural estate in Stams, Tyrol white as a reference to international exhibition standards and the white cube as a pristine setting in which to present art. But he went beyond merely attempting to alter the rustic wooden aesthetics of the room and the furniture, even painting his shoes white in order to escape local traditions. At the same time, the rainbow—as a reflection of nature—is permitted to symbolically invade the room, where it forms an antithesis to the civilizational demeanor seen here otherwise by contrasting photography with the mechanisms of drawing. The rainbow not only invades the room but, ironically, hits the artist in his heart. In addition, the wooden frame containing the four photographs likewise exhibits multiple colors—a trope via which the artist undermines artistic conventions and questions art’s hegemony over nature. W.S.