Why Silkscreen Colour Dazzles — mocchi mocchi, Stacking Colour

Are you thinking of it as "print"?

Silkscreen is the technique often used for posters and T-shirt prints.
So somewhere in our minds, "print stuff" is the image.

True, commercial printing uses silkscreen too.
Logo tote bags, concert T-shirts, stickers — most of the silkscreen we encounter in daily life is "mass-produced."

But "silkscreen prints" — pulled one by one by an artist — are a different thing entirely.

For one piece, multiple screens are prepared.
One screen per colour.
The red screen, the blue, the black — if it uses six colours, six screens are pressed onto the paper in sequence.

And each colour isn't "printed" onto the paper — it's "placed."

Colour isn't "painted," it's "placed"

The silkscreen is a mesh of silk (or synthetic fibre).
Only certain parts are treated to let ink pass through.

With a squeegee, you press the ink across the screen, and it falls through the treated mesh onto the paper.
The ink isn't "painted" with a brush. It passes through the mesh and is set down on the paper with a quiet "ka-thunk."

So silkscreen colour isn't a thin stain of paint — it's an independent layer of colour.
Colour exists as a "thing" on the paper.

You can't really tell the difference on screen.
But touch the real thing, and you can feel the paper has thickness.
The more layers, the more that thickness grows.

"Silkscreen is the work of stacking colour itself onto paper."
I think that's a fair way to put it.

That's why the colour dazzles

Why does silkscreen colour look so vivid?

Because the ink "sits as it is" on the paper.
It doesn't soak in like watercolour. It doesn't blend like oil.
Red stays red. Blue stays blue. Each present, distinct, on the paper surface.

Why iconic 20th-century pop artists — Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein — chose silkscreen probably comes back to this.
To cut out the air of an era cleanly, the material presence of silkscreen colour fit just right.

And decades later, silkscreen colour doesn't fade.
Because it sits as a "thing" on the paper, it doesn't easily change.
Five years, ten years after hanging it, you can see the same colour you first met.

mocchi mocchi's colour

One of ARTiATE's artists, mocchi mocchi, makes silkscreen works.

The use of colour is distinctive.
Strong colours, soft colours, contrasting colours, resonating colours — they begin to form relationships within the picture, as the screens layer.

In a single work, many squeegee strokes are made.
The order of layering, the precision of screen alignment, the judgments at each test print.
All of that creates the final "dazzle of colour."

Looking at mocchi mocchi's works, you think "colour can be this free."
There's no fine line drawing, yet the work catches your eye.
Probably because colour itself is the protagonist.

Rather than "painted," "colour was placed," "colour appeared" — those are the words that come to mind. Strange, wonderful pieces.

The moment it enters a room, colour transforms

The strange thing about silkscreen is that the moment it enters a room, the colour is born again.

In morning light, colours bounce brightly.
In afternoon light, they settle.
Under evening lamps, they sink deep.
On rainy days, they quiet down.

Painted works change expression with light, too.
But silkscreen changes more.
Because colour is independent as a "thing," it reflects light conditions directly.

People who hang silkscreens often say: "the colour looks different every day."
That's probably true.

The same work shows a different face every day. It's like placing a living view, in one frame, in your room.

The courage to make a room a little bold

Silkscreen is strong in colour.
"Is it too bold?" some people worry.

But hung in a real room, it fits surprisingly well.
If anything, white-walled rooms are exactly where silkscreen colour belongs.

A room of beige and grey, with one piece of vivid colour.
That's not making the room bold — it's giving the room a small "accent."

Like adding one red lipstick to a basic outfit in fashion.
One silkscreen, and the temperature of the room shifts slightly.

If you think "my home is all plain furniture," silkscreen probably suits you, more than you'd expect.

I don't know. But my eyes are pulled

Explaining silkscreen colour in words ends here.
The rest, you have to see.

You can't get half of mocchi mocchi's "dazzle" through a screen.
Still, if a piece on screen makes you think "huh, my eyes are pulled to this" —

Try placing it in your room.
The colour will meet you with a completely different face.

"I don't know. But my eyes are pulled" —
that's enough.