About Space… Synthese

Paul Kolker is pleased to present his sixty-ninth solo exhibition, About Space… Synthèse at the PAUL KOLKER collection at 511 West 25th Street from March 28 through May 24, 2019. Kolker’s exhibition of paintings and photographic prints is about an experiment which questions how we perceive the illusion of three dimensional static space in a two dimensional canvas; while using a sculptural control group of volumetric pyramids of spheres.

Kolker’s artistic focus is on the technological evolution of the television, computer and smart phone screens and how we see our real world re-formatted as a display of dots; or diodes. In 1975, when he first acquired an Advent three tube projector television, the grids of dots on the screen were so large, that when Kolker sat up close the image appeared abstract; while figural from afar. He observed the same progression of abstract to figural in his print media studies of Ben Day, Shinobu Ishihara and halftone dots; and to date his art continues to serve as visual experiments using pixelated or dotted images which test our perception, feelings and cognition. In addition, Kolker has observed that two dimensional fields of dots give the illusion of space and depth, especially in halftone overlays. Some vision researchers affirm that the fine tuning of a perception of depth is due to the physiologic fixation and very rapid microsaccadic to and fro scanning movements of the eye to focus both wide and deep fields of vision. Therefore, Kolker places colored fixation points to enhance these autonomic eye movements to give the illusion of space and depth.

In About Space… Synthèse, Kolker also tests a century old method of enhanced stereopsis using red and cyan anaglyph glasses to create an illusion of space between objects; rather than using shadow for depth and diminishing size for vanishing point perspective as other representational and figural artists have long used as a trompe l’oeil technique. The 9:16 formatted landscape mode of a digital camera outfitted with a split mirrored lens captures an image which is computer graphically converted to an anaglyph of fused red and blue layers of a photograph which overlays an abstract color halftone dot painting, giving the illusion of space separating the background dots from the foreground objects.

Moreover, in this experiment, a total of eight abstract decalcomania paintings and their transfers are displayed in salon style; and grouped with scant space between them to demonstrate the linear progression of the perceptual illusions and color field variables studied. Two are painted on black fields; two on white. One black field canvas has white dot overlays. One white field canvas has black dot overlays. The four decalcomania transfers onto canvas are overlain with dot grid stencils of 1089 dots and the circumscribed spaces are painted red, blue, white or black to study the Bezold optical color mixing as well as the red-blue anaglyph effects. The Hering opponent red-green and blue-yellow color pathways theory, which Kolker’s works continue to test, serves as the foundation for the color sequencing of the halftone paintings in the show; so that green is next to red, and yellow is next to blue. In addition, the photographed images of the eight abstract halftone and rectilinear dot paintings are used as synthèse layers.

Both the halftone and rectilinear dot paintings give the illusion of open space and a more expansive dimension on a two dimensional canvas; which explains why many beholder’s of Kolker’s new synthèse paintings perceive a remarkable and spacious depth effect. As a large scale study of a panoramic space in green and blue, Blue Fence Synthèse, 2019, a 99×297 inches transformation of Kolker’s Red Fence, 2003 (please visit http://paulkolker.com/exhibitions/boundaries-borders-and-frontiers/) is overlaid (using the artist’s synthèse process) with the abstract painting, Philtrum II Halftone Decalcomania op.1, 2019, also hung in this show. As a control to the four layered halftone decalcomania painting used in the large scale version of Blue Fence Synthèse, 2019, a smaller version of the painting Blue Fence Synthèse 1089, 2019 is transformed using a single layered rectilinear dot grid painting, Philtrum II Transfer Decalcomania 1089 op.1, 2019, to determine whether the space and depth illusion is dependent upon variations in the number of dot layers used in the synthèse process; viz. halftones are of four layers of dots and rectilinear grids are of a single layer.

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 Space… Synthèse is Kolker’s sixty-ninth solo exhibition.

In Paul Kolker: About Space… Synthèse, twenty-one new works are on view from March 28 through May 24, 2019 at the Paul Kolker collection, 511 West 25th Street in Chelsea, adjacent to the HighLine between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.

Paul Kolker: About Synthèse… The Marriage of Figural is ongoing through March 22, 2019.
Paul Kolker: Abstract Decalcomania… An Experiment in Perception is ongoing at 600 Third Avenue.

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