Maxime Fauconnier

The Waves (colors), 2022

3 typewritten pages on A4 paper, custom wooden frame, anti-reflective glass, 72 x 40 cm.


Released in 1931, “The Waves”, Virginia Woolf’s seventh novel, is considered one of her most daring and challenging. The book traces the lifetime of six friends through nine chapters, from childhood to old age, by making parallels to the changing position of the sun and the tides.

“The Waves” suggests that every human being is a distinct living unit while simultaneously being a part of every other unit of human life—that is, that we are part of one another. Reflecting Woolf’s concern with capturing the poetic rhythm of life, the intricacies of the mind and the passage of time, the novel questions whether language is capable of embodying everything we want to say.

“The Waves (colors)” is a 3-page typewritten work compiling chronologically the 675 colors mentioned in "The Waves", divided in sections corresponding to the nine chapters of the novel. Functioning as an enigmatic formula, the work dreams up the colors shaping the events and relationships of a lifetime.

Click here to read the text (EN) about the exhibition showing the piece alongside works of Ann Veronica Janssens and Patrick Carpentier at CCINQ, Brussels, Belgium, 2023.