Colour as Material: A Conversation with Muller Van Severen

In the shared space where Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen create, the boundaries between work, life, and art blur. Their studio is part workshop, part gallery, part home — filled with books, offcuts, colour samples, and half-formed objects. “It’s not a blank canvas,” they say. “We need texture, friction, references. Even the mess helps.” It’s a place where colour is not a finishing touch but part of the process — alive, intuitive, and constantly shifting in response to the materials around it.

For Muller Van Severen, colour and form emerge together. “We don’t separate them,” they explain. “Colour is material to us.” Sometimes a piece begins with a tone they can’t let go of — an internal reference, a remembered surface, a subtle visual itch. Other times it’s the shape that dictates what hue must follow. “It’s never about hierarchy. It’s about tension.”

Their work is known for its boldness, but also for its restraint — always walking the line between harmony and contrast. “Contrast excites us. It draws the eye. We like when colours shift slightly as you move, when something feels just a little off but still balanced. That’s where energy lives.” While harmony has its place, it’s often the unexpected pairings that bring their designs to life. Colour, in their hands, becomes something spatial and emotional — never just surface.

Over the years, Muller Van Severen's approach to colour has evolved. In the beginning, it was all instinct — bright, playful, loud. But as their practice matured, so did their palette. “We still trust intuition,” they say, “but now there’s more precision. We understand better how colour behaves in a space — how it changes with the light, how it relates to material, how it carries emotion.” With experience comes the confidence to use colour more quietly — and more deliberately. “Sometimes, the boldest gesture is restraint.”

That sensitivity extends to texture and surface. The way light falls across a tile, the grain of a plastic sheet, the softness of a pigment on paper — these are the kinds of details that often shape their decisions. “We once brought home a discarded piece of plastic just because of the way the light hit it. We’ve kept fruit skins, torn paper, oxidized metal... Colour often enters our world by accident. But we pay attention when it does.”

These moments — seemingly small — often carry echoes of something deeper. Childhood memories, in particular, linger in their palette. Fien Muller recalls the yellow curtains in her parents’ house, how they filled the room with golden light when the sun hit them. Hannes speaks of a deep green hallway, the red brick of his grandparents’ home — tones that still show up in their work, whether consciously or not. “A shade will feel right,” they say, “and only later do we realise it’s tied to something remembered.”

When asked about places that evoke colour for them, they both mention Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, London, and other great cities. “It’s chaos and elegance at once,” they reflect. “The layers of time, the sun-bleached tones, the painted shutters. Everything is faded but alive.” It’s this tension — between precision and softness, boldness and wear — that defines much of their aesthetic.

Their influences span both art and architecture. Ellsworth Kelly, for his treatment of colour as form. Le Corbusier, for his deeply spatial palette. And Donald Judd, for his honest use of material. These artists didn’t treat colour as embellishment, but as structure — and that’s exactly how Muller Van Severen approach it, too.

Asked about the colour of their home country, they pause. “Belgium is grey,” they say, “but it’s the good kind of grey. Misty, soft, full of subtle shifts. It moves.” This quiet grey, rich in nuance, is woven through much of their work — setting the tone for the more saturated hues to push against. “We like when something is bold, but slightly veiled. That’s the balance we’re always searching for.”

In their collaboration with Blēo, this thinking is distilled into a collection of colours that honour the materiality — colours that shift with light, carry memory, and invite unexpected compositions, “A wall can become a canvas.”

For Muller Van Severen, colour isn’t just about making something beautiful. It’s about building feeling — constructing space through tone, surface, and emotion. “We want colour to move,” they say. “To ask questions. To surprise.”