The Dot is In!

[December 11, 2008] In “The Dot is In!”, Paul Kolker exhibits a new series of modular and colorful dot paintings that play on the intersection of the digital world of data and the physical world of our senses. The show is the metaphorical holiday season “hors d’oeuvre” for the advent of the digital era in 2009 and Kolker’s forthcoming mid-winter exhibition, “Go Digital!”.

The dot has infiltrated the public’s visual imagination for more than 150 years with the “benday” and “halftone” dots discovered by Benjamin Day, William Talbot and Frederic Ives. Prior to the modern graphic use, the dot was an intersector of the lines used in the warp and weave of tapestries and fabrics; it was also used as a tile in mosaics and geometric wall patterns for years. Artisans and artists have used the dot for years- from aboriginal art, pointillism, divisionism and even artists responding to our contemporary and digital age. Although the dot has always been fashionable, it is particularly relevant today because everything from CRT, LED, plasma, LCD and OLED has dots…lots and lots of dots!

Kolker employs a style of painting and photography, which he calls “fracolor.” The “fra” connotes fractionation, fractal divisionism and iteration. A photograph of a subject or object is created, redacted, sometimes collaged and fractionated using computer graphics programs into a grid of squares. The “color” connotes the unique palette of elemental pigment and optical colors, applied either unmixed, as primary hues, or mixed only with black and/or white, as shades and tints. Finally, a grid is screen printed circumscribing each colored square in to a colored dot. Or, the grid is computer generated and used to create a lambda, C-print, or other chemical based image in 1089 (or more) dots per inch.

Germane to the holiday season, Kolker’s “The Dot is In!” uses a festive combination of elemental colors to create dots of hues, tints, and shades forming abstract patterns. The paintings are modular and can hang alone (24 x 24 inch canvases), together in large scale (96 x 96 inches or sixteen 24 x 24 inch canvases) or in-between. The paintings are readily connected or disconnected from each other, comprising a system of images that emphasizes spatial functionality and curatorial choice. The combinations are so numerous that the viewer-curator can rearrange Kolker’s work so that it reflects personal aesthetic tastes.

Evoking comparisons between abstract art, digital technology and visual sensation, the paintings included in “The Dot is In!” are a colorful addition to the artist’s larger body of works. Kolker explores the symbolic relationship of the dot as a metaphor for the bridge between the digital world and physical sensation. Using the dot as a visual model to link the abstract and the real, Kolker’s fracolor paintings use the structure of the dot grid as a universal language for exploring the relationship between sensory perception and the collective cultural response to changes in process and advances in technology.

Paul Kolker: The Dot is In! — Opening December 11, 2008.