[March 20, 2003] Paul Kolker’s In Perspective is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. Kolker’s series of images transfigured into large-scale fractured works deconstructs and calls into question how we, in perspective, visually grasp our lives, society and environs.
Paul Kolker’s work is firmly rooted in a style of painting, fracolor, a term coined by the artist. Kolker derives the term from ‘fractal’ and defines it as “frak’olor, n. a style of painting characterized by the surreal visual expansion of a geometrical structure by means of the deconstruction of its natural color into fractionated or primary components. From the Latin, fract’us, broken [into component parts].” For example, fractal image “><" appears more expansive than "<>.” Kolker uses primary colors in lieu of complex colors. His minimalist work is the result of an extensive reconnaissance into color theory, specifically the relationship between optical and pigment color. He plays with the constructed boundaries of color theories and then remains loyal to his limited palette on canvas, eschewing the mixed color.
A strong undercurrent of Renaissance style and technique curiously conjoin with the latest advancements in digital and photographic technology in Kolker’s work. The pixilation in Statue of Liberty insists on an awareness of modern computer technology. The structure of his panels and his use of perspective reference his profound Renaissance influences. His perspective in an image as large as or larger than the viewer, as in Chaim, invites the viewer into the work. The work is at once ingrained in the past, acknowledging the present, and welcoming the future.
His new work is a departure from his earlier sculpture that repeated one object in his allocated ‘primary colors’. Now he has opted to create the images on canvases, while unabashedly retaining the essence of this repetitive structure painted in his six ‘primary colors’ with an extensive series of oil washes, beeswax and paraffin. These multi-layered photographic and hand-painted images maintain a translucent effect despite the lustrous painterly qualities created by his tedious technique. The irregular surfaces and translucency of the wax permits both color and image to emanate from the canvas, not unlike viewing an image reflected in a rippling water surface. With such surface texture, and vibrant color, Kolker transforms an otherwise black-ink canvas print into a painting. His works contain the precision and perspective of the camera, while at the same time surreal color and an almost impressionistic diffraction of light. In Perspective fractures what we see in order to piece back together a more expansive view of our existence.
Paul Kolker: In Perspective — Opening March 20, 2003.