About bringing order into chaos

Colors, shapes and structures…the components that make up our environment. Be it in nature or made by humans. This week’s photos of things that inspired me deal with this topic in architecture and nature.

In search for harmony

«Color, Shape, Structure» was the theme of the first painting class I took. In it, I learned how to create a coherent, abstract image by using the three components. That’s what fascinated me. It’s about bringing order to chaos. Because basically color, shape, and texture can be anything to begin with. Then selecting certain things from that and bringing them into harmony, that’s the work of the visual artist. To evoke emotions through the conscious use of colors, shapes and structures. Basically, they are the elements of a non-verbal, visual communication. It is to them the heart responds.

Inspirational architecture

One evening, while having a glass of wine with a friend on his balcony, I was watching the sunset behind the Vosges Mountains in France. The constantly changing light and colors poured onto the buildings around Messeplatz and enchanted the otherwise rather cool modern architecture with its clear structures and shapes. «Architecture is bringing order into chaos», that’s what an architect friend told me many years ago when he explained what his work was about. As in painting, architecture plays with structures, with colors and with forms. I therefore always find architecture inspiring for my own work. As in a painting, architecture arouses emotions in us, on the basis of which we decide whether we like it or not.

Nothing beats Mother Nature

The great master and model for probably everything created by man is nature. How does nature always manage to conjure up a harmony that touches us. Everything always fits together in places where man has not yet intervened. In nature, countless colors, structures and forms coexist, each of which has a life of its own and yet fits perfectly into the big whole to which they are composed. You can always learn from nature. That’s what came to my mind when I walked through Oudolf Garden on the Vitra Campus on Sunday, after visiting the Garden Futures: Designing with Nature exhibition in the Vitra Design Museum. How beautiful can opposites be, differences, peculiarities, when combinated accordingly.

The importance of context

Sometimes you have to look at a section to understand the big picture. A single building next to another takes on a completely different meaning. Or a tree, seen in a certain proportion to its surroundings, gets a meaning it wouldn’t have if it were perceived as one among many. You have to look at everything in context to see more, to recognize more, to feel differently. This is where photography comes into play, which is precisely about capturing, in addition to a temporal moment, a deliberately chosen section of the whole.

This way of looking at, perceiving and judging things can also be transferred to the perception of our entire life. The world, life itself is a pure chaos in which many things do not go as we wish or which we do not understand. Thus, many things overwhelm us and make us afraid, angry, unhappy, sad. But we don’t have to understand everything, we don’t have to accept everything and feel responsible for everything. We can also choose sections that are manageable, especially those that we can influence. And there we can bring order into it for us personally. Create structures, define forms that fit us and give our life a color that makes us happy.

For all Photos of the week click here