Kolker uses his already well established process of fractionation and color transformation which he calls fracolor. A combination of photography and light optics, computer graphics and plotter scanning, and inkjet and screen printing techniques are used to create the acrylic on canvas paintings, LED light box sculptures and inkjet on canvas ceiling mural prints in the show.
The artist, also a doctor and lawyer, in this show uses his art to preach the sermon of good health and to warn us of the perils of overindulgence and self-destructive habits. Kolker explains: “Many of our healthcare costs are generated by poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, obesity and overweight, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse. Especially, when we are metaphorically tethered to our sofas watching television, which through commercials suggest that we visit our refrigerator and pantry, like Pavlov’s dogs, we get up and go for the chips, dip and beer although we are not hungry. The cumulative effects over the years of this Pandora’s leisure paradigm, is the metabolic syndrome of cardiopulmonary and vascular diseases, hypertension, heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Think metabolic syndrome when you see a man or boy with an apple shaped torso and a woman or girl who looks like a pear.”
The Pandora Syndrome…Go Gesundheit!, 2010/2011, installation views
In fact, most of Kolker’s new works in the Pandora Syndrome depict apples and pears. The paintings employ bold elemental colored letters spelling HOPE overlaid on images, which are fragmented toward abstraction and then reconstructed by collage and montage. As the Pandora’s Box narrative goes, after the lid was opened and illness was released, all that remains in the box is hope!
Paul Kolker: The Pandora Syndrome…Go Gesundheit! — December 16, 2010 through February 2011.