‘All The Colors of The Rennbow’ Art Series
At the 'The Driven Women' and Porsche Cayenne Reveal event at Porsche Tysons Corner, Virginia, in late October, American artist and documentarian Heidi Mraz unveiled a new series of optical art titled 'All the Colours of the Rennbow,' crafted from a palette of Porsche-centric exterior paint colours. Sampled from the brand's library of over 600 colours spanning its 75-year history, this new collection offers a dynamic retrospective inside a mosaic masterpiece.
Mraz's lifelong fascination with color has led her to study visual science, where she investigates how humans perceive color, contrast, and shapes. She has always seen the world of automobiles as an intricate mosaic of colors. “Porsche’s spectrum of hues is vast, I wanted to honor their color legacy in an unforgettable way by incorporating color theory and the science of seeing into my art,” Mraz explains.
‘Abstracted Porsche 917’ optically transforms from a geometric abstraction into a race car in the mirror balls’ reduced reflection of the art.
Using Porsche's own colour palette, the dynamic experience series 'All the Colours of the Rennbow' displays the sports cars and their unique crest on the cusp of notoriety. At first glance, the artwork is just a bright geometric abstraction, but as you step back or look at it via a convex mirror or a smartphone, the colours change and a secret image emerges. When the viewer's mind optically combines the colours of a reduced image, a revelation occurs.
Mraz narrows her palette to 400–600 vibrant laser-cut geometric shapes and 911 silhouettes for extra detail for each multi-layered canvas measuring 30” by 40” to 48” by 60”. Creating these optical illusions is no easy task, explains Mraz. “It takes hours of experimenting with hundreds of colors to give viewers that ‘ah-ha’ moment of discovery.”
‘Rennbow GT3’ in Speed Yellow on right with matching ‘Rennbow Speed Lines’ sampled from Porsche exterior paint color swatches on left.
In order to achieve this optical illusion, Mraz must carefully arrange enormous blocks of separately coloured objects such that, from a distance, the colours merge into new, unseen hues and shapes in the viewer's own imagination. Through a process known as optical mixing, viewers are tricked to believe that colors are being blended together when in fact they are not.
“When I first saw Heidi’s art I was blown away,” says Daniel Rodriguez, Managing Director of Porsche Tysons Corner. “It’s incredible how hundreds of colors can shift from an abstraction into a three-colored Porsche logo. We were thrilled to host her unveiling at our event and our guests were equally as amazed.”
According to Rodriguez, a line to view the art grew as astonished guests pulled other people over to take a look. Mraz added, “It was fun pointing out colors like Miami Blue, Chartreuse, Rubystar, and Lizard Green while guests had no idea they were actually looking at a Porsche crest until I handed them a convex mirror.”
If distance is the master key to the image, then strategically placed colour is the engine that propels transformation. Over the past decade, Mraz has photographed the colours on vehicles at major international auto events and visited Porsche stores to compile a database of thousands of colour swatches. In addition, she has gathered sample paint chips and colourful pages clipped and scanned from auction catalogues, books, periodicals, and the Porsche Club of America's Rennbow.org site.
Why so many color swatches? Mraz explains, “Consider that a single exterior paint color can reveal a multitude of shades and tints, depending on the light, the environment, the paint’s reflective properties, and the car’s shape. And I can never have too many color choices.”
A dynamic retrospective and a mosaic masterpiece that merges years of Porsche colour history into a contemporary piece of art that honours the past while looking to the future are the outcomes of Mraz's efforts to capture the Rennbow spectrum.
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