A blurred and indistinct image with green, yellow, and black colors.

Failure of Reference

Close-up of a yellow flower with a dark center, blurry and out of focus.

Sample 004: brown, beige and black

A blurred image with warm colors including beige, brown, orange, and red, making it difficult to distinguish any specific objects.

Sample 003: brown, orange and black

Blurred colorful image with green, yellow, red, and blue hues.

Sample 002 grey, black and brown

The image is blurry with indistinct colors and shapes, predominantly featuring blue, yellow, black, and some beige areas.

Sample 005: orange and black

Blurred colorful image with shades of blue, black, brown, and yellow, making it indiscernible.

Sample 008: blue, orange, black and grey

Blurred colorful image with indistinct shapes and colors, primarily black, red, and beige.

Sample 001: purple, brown and orange

Blurred colorful image with a yellow object with a black spot in the center.

Sample 009 black and red

Failure of Reference

Almost motionless, these works hold color the way a surface holds heat.

They evoke painting, yet are rooted in photography. In occupying that threshold, they refuse both: the documentary authority of the photograph and the expressive freedom of the painted surface. What remains is color. It does not confirm anything.

Color has always been presented as something shared. A common language, stable and legible, available to anyone who looks. This work proposes that this was never true. What passes for consensus is a fiction repeated often enough to feel like fact.

The titles name the colors. This is not a claim that can be verified.

Sample 007: orange and black

Installation shot at De Galerie Rotterdam