Failure of Reference

Failure of Reference

These are quiet works. Stilled, almost motionless, they hold color the way a surface holds heat: without explanation, without invitation.

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, unanchored and unverified.

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

The titles name the colors each work contains. Whether they are correct, there is no way to know.