[April 6, 2006] Paul Kolker’s “Surge on to the operating room” — Kolker is Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at North Shore LIJ / Glen Cove Hospital on Long Island. As a surgeon, the artist has “star[ed] productively at naked bodies” and body parts while performing thousands of heart, chest and vascular operations. He brings to his paintings the surgical disciplines of procedural excellence, substantive knowledge and deep feelings.
Kolker’s studio in the salon, much like his operating room, is well organized, fully equipped and staffed by a team of outstanding assistants. Like his surgical incision, dissection and repair, he fractionates, deconstructs and recreates the subject of his paintings. He imparts an esthetic and an ideological perspective using space, color and light – a process, which he calls fracolor.
In his painting, or table lucida (2006), 99 x 99 inches, Kolker spatially reforms his subject image into a mathematical grid which is also numerologically mystical. Colorwise, he eschews complex colors and paints in formulary fashion using only elemental optical and pigment colors with black and white. He silk-screens the canvas creating a background leitmotif providing lucid focus. At will, the painting is illuminated by a video projection which creates interpretative tension.
Paul Kolker: Surge on to the operating room — Opening April 6, 2006.