“Color Lab” Exhibition Explores the Depths of Color

The “Color Lab” exhibition by artists Liz Nielsen, Vanessa Donoso López, and Melanie McClintock was due to take place at our Gallery from March 11 to April 11, 2020.

However, as VCUarts Qatar had to suspend on campus instruction and move to an alternative model of operation as a preventative measure against the spread of Coronavirus, the Gallery opted to host a limited opening for the team behind the exhibition on March 11. Photos from the limited opening are shown here. More can be seen on Instagram at vcuqatar and at vcuq_gallery

Through an interactive collection of artist works and workshops, “Color Lab” explores the shifting face of color, inviting the observer to participate in a series of chromatographic journeys through chromatography, cyanotypes, photograms, and pigments of provenance, sourced and apportioned to denote a sense of place. 

The exhibition Curator is Melanie McClintock, a graduate of the University’s home campus in Richmond, Virginia.

“When I was asked to curate a show on color, many potential paths came to mind, so many that I was often simultaneously excited, inspired, and overwhelmed,” McClintock said. “I knew I did not want the show to simply be about the surface of color. It had to be about the depths of color: its materiality, the way it moves, the way it reacts to light, and ultimately, the special places where color melds science and art.”  

Liz Nielsen’s works have been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Paris, London, Budapest, Amsterdam and Berlin. Her photographs are printed in an analog color darkroom with handmade negatives and found light sources, and her artwork has been reviewed in The New Yorker, The Financial Times, The British Journal of Photography, The New York Times, LensCulture, FOAM magazine, and ArtSlant among others.

Vanessa Donoso López has exhibited nationally and internationally with recent selected solo exhibitions including, “I shall change the way things are ordered”, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin;, “No fixed color Continuum”, Candyland, Stockholm; “the rain in spain falls mainly off the plane”, Barcelona; “Scientifico-experimental-techno-color-movement”, M’ATUVU Project Space, Brussels; and “Establishing a Mission” at the Ashford Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin.

Melanie McClintock’s concepts explore the ideas of time, worthiness, and sense of place. She received an MFA in Color and Materials Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan; and a BFA in Fashion Design from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. While running the Brooklyn-based boutique and gallery, Ai Ai Gasa (2006-08), she curated bi-monthly shows for such local artists including Alex Soto, Bailey Saliwanchik, and Eun-ha Paek. In 2012, she spearheaded a social art program in Indonesia, where she curated six exhibitions of student work in galleries throughout Java over two years. A few years later, she curated a show at the Gallery at VCUarts Qatar for Indonesian graffiti artists, Ismu Ismoyo and Tri ‘Vendi’ Effendi, titled “Issue Isme.”