Yves Klein's IKB 115 from 1959 embodies the artist's romanticized belief of the immaterial wo🍸rld.  Seemingly embracing the form of the ready-made in the age of mass production, Klein's series of blue monocꦿhrome paintings in actuality rejects these ideas through the artist's insistence on the unique value of each individual work. For Klein, the worth of each resided in the irreproducible artistic creativity instilled in it.  The artist's belief in the existence of an immaterial world or 'the void' stemmed from his study of Zen Buddhism, Judo, and philosophy.  Klein used his spirituality as a path to knowledge of human nature and the universe rather than as an escape, and he was optimistic and adventurous, thriving on exploring new terrain.  These beliefs are crucial to understanding Klein's art. 

IKB 115 requires the viewer to deeply engage in a hypnotic interaction with the work.  'International Klein Blue' (patented by Klein in 1960) denotes space, purity, and freedom. With no apparent trace of the artist’s hand, the electric blue pigment saturates the canvas without variation in complete uninterrupted unity.  Rather than juxtaposing color, Klein favored the purity of one unmediated color.  The picture plane is flat, without variation of color and brushstroke, lacking hierarchy in tone and texture.  Klein, among other artists at the time, was seeking to create a more truthful art and the monochrome is the penultimate sensory experience on the path to completely undoing the pictorial tradition.  Klein noted, "What pleased me above all, was pure pigments in powder like the ones I often saw at the wholesale color dealers…it was truly color in itself…living and tangible color material." (Exh. Cat, Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Yves Klein, 1994, p. 59)

Klein bridged the gap between abstraction and conceptual art with an understated confrontational drama in the monochrome paintings.  The unity and infinity of the blueness brings to mind sea and sky.  Klein was drawn to nature and the evocative atmosphere of the limitless in these blue expanses, captivated by both their freedom and rich color.  In the present work Klein seeks to create a space for the viewer in relation to an infinite universe.  IKB 115 and the IKB🌱 series are intensely captivating, enigmatic and visual clarifications of this existential quandary.