About Atmosphere…Synthèse

Paul Kolker is pleased to present his seventieth solo exhibition, About Atmosphere… Synthèse at the PAUL KOLKER Collection, 511 West 25th Street from June 6 through September 6, 2019. Synthèse, based on the synthesis of man-made products, is Kolker’s process of painting or printing a translucent image over an underlying opaque one. Kolker curates this exhibition of his paintings and prints to study how the viewer perceives the mood of the artist’s experience evoked by the exhibition as a whole; and also through the viewer’s perception of each of the exhibition’s stand-alone works. Kolker calls this evoked mood, atmosphere.

The works in this exhibition highlight the atmospheres of a special Buber-like dialogue between the art and its viewers gathering at a museum, gallery, auction house, art fair, private collection, artist’s studio and other venues where art is exhibited in the outdoors, in the home or as a pop-up show. Kolker has discovered this special mood of the exhibition’s spectacle when in December 2001, at his same location in Chelsea, his studio, then called Studio 601, was not only filled with works of art, but also with spectators.

Today, Kolker’s exhibition space is still his studio occupying most of the basement of 511 West 25th Street in Chelsea. His exhibitions are curated to fit within his mental estimation of the studio’s nearly 70,000 cubic feet, with 250 linear feet of wall space. Curating an exhibition is like planning table seating arrangements to enable the ease of conversation and dialogue amongst guests at a large party of hundreds. Kolker hangs his works in a manner that paintings next to one another engage in a John Ruskin’s ‘pathetic fallacy’ type of dialogue… if paintings could speak to each other. Rather the exhibition and its works speak to us, its viewers, in an atmosphere far beyond words; but through our visual fixations, memories and associations, cognitions and feelings.

As an hors d’oeuvre to his exhibition, About Atmosphere… Synthèse, Kolker wants the viewers to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of his synthèse painting, pranzare by the sea at capri synthèse, 2019, as depicted above, documenting the artist’s experience in 2010 at a sea side restaurant in Capri. On a wall card near the painting, Kolker invites the painting’s beholders to use their imaginations to experience the work’s atmosphere. The card reads:

 

“Imagine the aromas of the fresh salt air of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the zest of ripening and still hanging lemons, and the savory wafts of smoke from al fresco grills. Imagine an impending rain storm with its dark clouds hiding in the horizon. Imagine a former President, or perhaps his look alike, at a nearby table. Pay attention to the fractal-like reflections of the underlying colors and shapes from my gestural decalcomania painted dots printed on the canvases. Imagine how this experiment in perception can create an atmosphere housing the static nostalgia of a moment of my experience; portrayed by me. Also, imagine how you alone might perceive this painting, but based on your own atmospheric layering of memories of your associated experiences and feelings. And perhaps, your experimental findings may show that the atmosphere of my painting has become your atmosphere; your vision; your memories and associations; your cognition; and the oxygen fueling your feelings.”

 

Paul Kolker (b. 1935) is a New York based artist with doctorate degrees in medicine and law. He is Fellow American College of Surgeons, Fellow American College of Legal Medicine and Emeritus Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Northwell Glen Cove Hospital, having practiced cardiothoracic surgery on Long Island from 1969 to 2013. In October 2001 Kolker moved his Long Island studio to his current address in the Chelsea art district so that he could produce his works and curate his exhibitions as an experiment in perception. His studio and gallery have together become his laboratory in which the viewer is the measuring instrument for Kolker’s art as a perceptual experiment. About Atmosphere… Synthèse is Kolker’s seventieth solo exhibition.

In Paul Kolker: About Atmosphere… Synthèse, twenty-one new works are on view from June 6 through September 6, 2019 at the Paul Kolker collection, 511 West 25th Street in Chelsea, adjacent to the HighLine between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.

Paul Kolker: About Space… Synthèse is ongoing through May 31, 2019.
Paul Kolker: Abstract Decalcomania… An Experiment in Perception is ongoing at 600 Third Avenue.

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