Failure of Reference

Sample 004: brown, beige and black

Sample 003: brown, orange and black

Sample 002 grey, black and brown

Sample 005: orange and black

Sample 008: blue, orange, black and grey

Sample 001: purple, brown and orange

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