SYNESTHESIA. VISUAL ART BY THE BLIND ARTISTS.

​

Date: May 22 -Opening Reception

Ongoing Permanent Exhibition

Location: DorDor Gallery, New-York

Belonica Art School (Belarus)

​

"Clothes"

​

Once, one of our blind artists accidentally touched Lihtar's clothes. A melody corresponding to the blue color rang out. It seems to be simple and understandable. If you ask if the clothes have a color, a blind person will answer “yes”. But this is just a theory. Color is completely absent in their lives and the fact that the jacket “sounds blue” caused genuine surprise and was embodied in a series of paintings using elements of clothing.

​

"Contour"

​

Navigating the canvas and reproducing two-dimensional forms is not an easy task for a blind artist. They live in a three-dimensional world and learn to understand how a cube or pyramid looks on a plane, how they interact with each other. In their painting, our artists use different techniques, including gluing the contours of figures with a thread.

 

"Shades"

​

Before the first painting, our artists knew that the grass is green and the orange is orange. But the fact that any color can have thousands of shades was a real discovery for them. Shades of the same color can express completely different emotions and carry different meanings. So green can express youth and development, or it can be associated with longing and illness.

Artists understand the versatility of the world of colors through the sensations available to them. One of these things is jelly. It can be of different tastes [these are colors], different saturations (from tasteless to sugary berry) [this is color saturation], different thicknesses [this is lightness].

​

The series of paintings with shades is accompanied by braille plaques with the name of the color. And the painting "Red on Green" has a separate story. The artist, due to his peculiarities, confused the colors and began to paint a “green” picture in red. As a result of such incidents, a wonderful work was born.

​

"Many blind people find it difficult to find their place in society. We create art spaces where they can communicate and be creative. A place where people have a chance to feel their social significance and fill their lives with interesting events.

To teach painting, we developed a Lihtar device and wrote a mobile application that translates colors into music. In our arsenal, there are several more gadgets that help the blind to navigate the plane and select color schemes. There are plans to develop other devices that will expand the capabilities of blind people."

 

Sergey and Irina Bondarovich,

Belonica Art School

"Character"

 

Our blind artists understand colors through sounds, smells, tactile sensations and emotions. Each color has its own set of emotional states. In this series of paintings, the artists showed their peculiarities in color, and the dots on the canvas are the first letters of their names in Braille.

 

"Waves"

​

Sometimes understanding color alone is not enough to paint a good picture. It is important that the colors complement each other. Itten's color wheel, adapted for the blind, helps our artists build harmonious color schemes. Volumetric elements (waves of paint) make their works more accessible and understandable for people who “see” the world with their fingertips.

 

"Clouds"

 

How to explain to a person who has never seen the sky what clouds look like? Give cotton wool or cotton to touch. And how to explain how clouds turn into thunderclouds or are illuminated by the rays of the sun at dawn? In his series, the artist shared with us his idea of the sky and clouds.

 

"Surroundings"

 

Through painting, our artists share their perception of the world with the viewer, allowing them to look at ordinary things from an unexpected perspective. For example, the love of recreation in the countryside and the culture of the USSR finds expression in the paintings of Anna Pleskach. Ivan Protosovitsky's passion for cars is reflected in sharp corners, swift red and brutal black. Vlad Kornev passes everything through the prism of his own philosophy, which can often be observed on his canvases.

 

"Self-Expression"

appearance, and things for convenience, not brand and price. In this world, pure emotions, based on inner feelings, and not on imposed values, come to the fore. Painting has no boundaries and gives you the opportunity to express yourself, open up and be completely honest with the viewer.

 

"Coffee"

Sometimes, creating a work requires its own atmosphere. So, writing a series of paintings dedicated to coffee immersed the children in a magical world, where they got acquainted with the history of coffee, touched and inhaled the aroma of coffee beans, talked about the reasons for the popularity of this drink.

​

"Shapes"

 

A series of paintings using 3D printing, textiles and pasty strokes are designed to make painting more understandable for the blind. The simple shapes and clear boundaries of colors allow for a better sense of the composition and interaction of objects through tactile sensations and with the help of the Lihtar color recognition device.

The Deaf-Blindness Help Charity hosts the fundraising event to purchase 3D Braille Printers for Belonica Art School in Belarus and Blind Artists in the USA. The charity will help to engage all supporters and bring publicity to this event.

The Belonica art school developed a Lihtar device and a special mobile application that translates colors into music. Several more gadgets that help blind artists to navigate the plane and select color schemes.  Plans to develop other devices that will expand the capabilities of blind people are also being developed. The goal is to enable blind people to fully engage in creativity and to turn their thoughts into words and digital images. We believe that artificial intelligence plays an essential role in helping these artists to paint interpreting the electrical signal emitted by the body.