Beyond the Plane (End of Painting), 2022
Site-specific light installation
RGB LED lights, canvas, electric components, rope, fan
10' x 10'
100 years ago the Russian constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko exhibited 3 pure color paintings that isolated the pigment in 3 primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. He reduced the painting to its logical conclusion, the color and the plane, that he said embodied the essence of painting and also became its end. He never painted again.
Continuing the conversation where he left off, this art installation is a commentary on painting and its relationship with contemporary art. The light picks up where painting ended and goes on. The light differs from the paint as it is present, but immaterial. This immateriality and dispersion into three-dimensional space from the flat plane of the canvas is going to save the color from the ‘death’ of painting. The paint can no longer trap the color. Color is now light and, without constrains of paint, it is freed to be only itself.
As Rodchenko concludes, everything can be reduced to the basics, the primary colors, and that’s where we start, but then witness the color addition happen in the shadows of the canvas and all over the installation. Green with purple on one side, red with aqua on the other, with multi-color artifacts on the center wall. The canvas are also washed in color light.
Rodchenko’s dilemma is grounded in 2D, while the answer goes beyond the canvas, continuing off the plane and into space around us.
RGB LED lights, canvas, electric components, rope, fan
10' x 10'
100 years ago the Russian constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko exhibited 3 pure color paintings that isolated the pigment in 3 primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. He reduced the painting to its logical conclusion, the color and the plane, that he said embodied the essence of painting and also became its end. He never painted again.
Continuing the conversation where he left off, this art installation is a commentary on painting and its relationship with contemporary art. The light picks up where painting ended and goes on. The light differs from the paint as it is present, but immaterial. This immateriality and dispersion into three-dimensional space from the flat plane of the canvas is going to save the color from the ‘death’ of painting. The paint can no longer trap the color. Color is now light and, without constrains of paint, it is freed to be only itself.
As Rodchenko concludes, everything can be reduced to the basics, the primary colors, and that’s where we start, but then witness the color addition happen in the shadows of the canvas and all over the installation. Green with purple on one side, red with aqua on the other, with multi-color artifacts on the center wall. The canvas are also washed in color light.
Rodchenko’s dilemma is grounded in 2D, while the answer goes beyond the canvas, continuing off the plane and into space around us.
