© Zoer
© Zoer
ART WITHIN SURFACES
French Artist Creates a Colour Palette With 144 Automobile Models Solara is site-specific art installation by French painter Zoer, which features 144 automotive models recovered by one of largest scrapyard in France. With this project, the artist aims at creating an industrial heritage by saving automobile wreckage, while cleaning up metal-polluted soils.
Z
oer’s project links the heart of
years has arranged them throughout his
automobiles also reflect the collective
painting - the colour - to the
life. Each vehicle appears as a component
impact of consumer objects, underlining the
automobile wreck, by defining a
of an overall composition, a pixel with its
consequent global footprint issue.
palette on 144 automobile models.
own colour and brightness among all the
In fact, through this installation, the artist
The artwork title is a reference to a car
elements of an image.
wants to underline the necessity to save
model produced until 1981, the latest car
automobile wreckage not only as industrial
The Talbot Solara. This model is among the
Heritage and ecology: the aim of the project
144 painted cars that make up the colour
To preserve the memory of these car
a successful crowdfunding campaign
chart. The title has been specifically chosen
wrecks, the artist has created a colour chart
to buy hyperaccumulating plants for
among all the industrial names because
in which the RGB reference is combined
phytoremediation of the French scrapyard
it etymologically refers to the solarization
with the collective imagination by renaming
and bring these wrecks to the museum.
phenomenon, a natural process of colour
each shade used with the name of the car
Symbolically, the artist would like that
alteration after a long exposure to the
model on which it was applied. This way,
for each car saved from complete
sunlight. To respect this phenomenon,
each colour carries with it the history of the
destruction and showcased in a museum
Zoer’s intervention focuses mainly on the
object, its use, and its personality.
or private collection, an agricultural plot of
hoods, roofs, and trunks of the cars.
By associating the individual aspect of
hyperaccumulating plants equivalent to the
The layout of these cars corresponds to the
the object with the infinity of possibilities
car’s size is planted.
way in which the scrapyard owner for 50
offered by the RGB system, all these
of Anglo-French car manufacturer Talbot:
56
N. 67 - JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 - international PAINT&COATING magazine
heritage but also to avoid soil pollution. To tackle both issues, Zoer launched