The Average Color of Paradise

The Average Color of Paradise is an artistic research for ‘Paradise’ during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and 2021 we collectively resorted to the virtual world of the Internet. This book is about the question what ‘paradise’ looks like in the virtual world during the corona crisis.
Using ‘PARADISE’ as a search term in three languages (English, Dutch and French), 1500 images and descriptions of paradises have been collected from the Internet. Next, these images have been translated into their average color value.
The descriptions found for the colors fictionalize paradise, resulting in a different story being told and in a deconstruction of paradise taking place.
Surprisingly, the PARADISE search did not produce any sex-related content, whereas sex is socially and culturally nearly always linked to the notion of ‘PARADISE’ and is omnipresent on the internet. In the addendum, PARADISE PORN has been used as a search term for the final 100 paradises.
THE AVERAGE COLOR OF PARADISE is a collection of color chips of 1,600 paradise colors and can be seen as a parody of advertising, of ourselves, in a world in which we are constantly at risk of losing ourselves between fiction and reality.

Edition: 50 copies
Production: Printing on Demand
20 x 25 cm
348 pages

This publication was realized with financial support of the Elisabeth Vermaat Müller Fund