RGB 2014

Curator: This painting is titled "RGB" by Eckart Hahn, created in 2014 using oil paint. At first glance, what does it bring to mind for you? Editor: It feels…oddly sterile, yet also undeniably absurd. Like a forgotten experiment in a pristine, slightly mad laboratory. All that gleaming white, and then those dollops of pure pigment just there. Curator: That sterile quality resonates. White peacocks have long held a powerful symbolic charge, often associated with purity, divinity, even blindness to worldly concerns. Hahn seems to invert some of those connotations, though. Editor: Right? The "RGB" title, plus the spilled paint. It smacks of deconstruction, like he's broken down this symbol of untouchable beauty into its component parts: light itself, and then primary colours that could, theoretically, recreate *anything.* Curator: There's also the position; we rarely see a peacock presented from the rear! The typical frontal display of iridescent feathers is conspicuously absent. Here, it is the mundane tail feathers and unassuming backside that grab our attention, an unusual way to depict pride. Editor: It's almost an anti-peacock, yeah? The usual symbolism inverted, but without becoming cynical. The vulnerability makes it more powerful. It’s standing in the mess of creation, so it becomes almost like a portrait of an artist in the studio or something. Curator: Precisely. Considering the meticulous realism, it's tempting to read those pools of pigment as emotional, not purely technical. The peacock, blinded by its whiteness, or perhaps feigning blindness, steps into the creative chaos it might prefer to ignore. Editor: Maybe the "blindness" is intentional, and part of the art piece - the art world. We all do crazy things like that and pretend that's how it is. It looks incredible, really, because the symbolism really has depth. What you find if you let it pull you in is impressive! Curator: It's a work that holds those dualities in tight suspension: reverence and irreverence, elegance and the earthy reality of artistic practice. Editor: Agreed. It makes you rethink the whole notion of image and what is "behind it," literally. The title only reinforces that deconstruction - brilliant.