Dieter Jung – Life of Colors

The solo exhibition Life of Colors by Dieter Jung at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin opens up spaces in which rhythm becomes tangible as a universal principle—manifested as the vibration of light, color, and perception. On view are works spanning four decades that illuminate the central role of color in Jung’s multifaceted practice.

At the heart of Life of Colors lies color as living light. Jung employs optical interference, spectral refractions, and subtle impulses of motion to create immaterial image spaces that oscillate between surface and depth. The works respond to the presence of viewers, inviting an active, almost meditative mode of seeing. Light is not treated as a means of illumination, but as an energetic continuum that leads to a direct experience of resonance.

Since the 1970s, Dieter Jung has been among the most significant pioneers of artistic holography. His work explores the interplay of light, movement, space, and time. He develops visual systems in which color becomes an immaterial, vibrating energy field. His holokinetic and color-based works make rhythm visible—not as a musical structure, but as a pulsating frequency that unfolds in space and in the gaze of the viewer.

Alongside his holographic investigations, painting forms a vital foundation of his oeuvre. Jung’s color spaces emerge from precise, serial structures in which color acts as an energetic continuum. The canvases follow internal fields of movement, where light and color condense, overlap, and drift apart in vibrating transitions.

Holography, in particular, shapes the exploratory impulse of his practice: the motifs arise from deliberate overlays, refractions, and experiments—the result of an inquiry into perception and visual energies at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Painting and holography, drawing, printmaking, and object-based works do not stand isolated from one another. In Jung’s work, they fuse into an expanded understanding of vision. Together, they explore the invisible within the visible, painting with photons.

Dieter Jung’s art is embedded in a network of diverse international relationships. His works and installations have been shown in more than forty countries, notably in Brazil, where from the 1970s to the 1990s they were exhibited in institutions such as MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM), and various Goethe-Institutes. These presentations led to inspiring encounters with artists of Concrete Art and Concrete Poetry, as well as figures from music, film, and holography—including Moises Baumstein, Israel Pedrosa, Glauber Rocha, Turibio Santos, and Jorge Amado.

— Tereza de Arruda

Born in 1941, Dieter Jung has explored light as a sculptural material within immaterial space since the 1960s. His discovery of holography in the 1970s led to works that shifted the boundaries of pictorial worlds and invited viewers into a dance before the holograms: perceiving and participating; participating and perceiving.

From 1985–86, Jung was a CAVS Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, where his close friendship with Otto Piene began. Jung’s works have been exhibited in major museums and institutions worldwide; most recently, the ZKM Karlsruhe presented a comprehensive retrospective titled Between and Beyond. He has received numerous grants and awards, among them the CAVS Rockefeller Fellowship at MIT. On the occasion of his 85th birthday next year, a major museum exhibition is planned at the Vasarely Museum in Budapest, among other venues.

Works by Dieter Jung are held in numerous museums and collections around the globe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; the ZKM Karlsruhe; and the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.