Blue and Green

Azul y Verde is LANZA’s second solo exhibition at AGO Projects and will be on view from February 2 through the summer.

Green was named before blue.

At least in classical Greek literature, where the color blue is never mentioned. Hellenic poets describe the sea as dark wine and the sky as bronze.

-Did Athena have green eyes?, we asked a scholar of the Odyssey, where she is always referred to as Glaukopis.

-No, she has bright eyes. Glaukós can mean blue, green, or bright.

The ancient Egyptians named blue in two ways: Irtiu to describe water and sky, and khesbedj to identify lapis lazuli and, by extension, the synthetic pigment known as Egyptian blue. But there was also the word wꜣḏ, which they used interchangeably to refer to both green and blue.

Glaukós and wꜣḏ are just some of the words that designate both colors at the same time.

The Mayan yax, the Nahuatl xiuhtic, the Japanese ao (青), the Korean pureuda (푸르다), all evoke both green and blue simultaneously.

Two opposites traveling in the same word at the same time. Opposites that converge until they coalesce. An immense seed immortalized in aluminum. A ship’s sail transformed into a sofa. A light that greets from the top of an undulating rebar, from behind a piece of paper. A chair that folds into a silver square. A bookshelf where one can sit and read. A brick with a metallic twin. A black flower with eight petals to gather around.

Blue and green were named as one.