The exhibition En vivo y en directo. Color, percepción y experiencia (Live and Direct. Colour, Perception and Experience), organised by the Museo Universidad de Navarra and curated by Nathaniel Barret and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, is an interdisciplinary study of the nature of colour and its dynamic character, examining the mechanisms that shape our visual experience from the perspectives of art, science and philosophy. Through a selection of artworks and experimental devices, the exhibition explores how colours change and take on meaning depending on the context, challenging conventional ideas of colour as a stable, independent property. Within this framework, the contributions of artists who have investigated the relational dimension of colour are fundamental for a proper understanding of the perceptual processes underpinning the exhibition.

The inclusion of Physichromie No. 1022 (1975), from the BBVA Collection, makes an essential contribution to the exhibition’s thesis, exemplifying Carlos Cruz-Diez’s investigations into the autonomy of colour and its behaviour in space. Part of the Physichromie series, begun in 1959, the work transforms the perception of colour into an active, changing phenomenon, determined by the viewer’s movement and variations in the surrounding light. The serial arrangement of aluminium strips and modulating elements generates a constant appearance and disappearance of different tones, revealing the unstable and relational nature of colour. In this sense, the work encapsulates the principles of Cruz-Diez’s artistic and theoretical practice, while reinforcing one of the exhibition’s central concepts by demonstrating how visual experience emerges from the interaction between colour, movement and perception.