The Dot is In…Framed!

[November 17, 2011] Paul Kolker: ‘The Dot is In…Framed!’ is an exhibition of new dot paintings which are painted on ink-jet on canvas prints of eighteenth and nineteenth century gilded frames, photographed and transformed by the artist in such a manner that the frame becomes an integral and compositional part of the subject rather than a mere decorative appendage of the work.

Kolker portrays the dot as the primordial building block of our digital world; iconic for the sub-atomic particles which we cannot see with our naked eyes; or the glowing pixels, which we can barely see on the display screens of our television, computer and mobile phone. The dpi (dots per inch) has become the new yardstick for the resolution and definition of everything which is digital. Even that amorphous polymer, crystal or plastic skin of paint on canvas, when viewed under the electron microscope, appears as dot-filled necklaces of molecules strung together in a lattice of dots. Zoom in towards anything in our physical universe and you will see the dot; or neutrino, neutron, positron, electron or other particles, spinning in the sub-microcosm of a universe which looks so much like that dot-filled, starry night we can see with our naked eyes. From up close or from afar, Kolker’s world is replete with dots; as it has been for more than thirty years.

Image: the dot is in and framed! 2011 inkjet and acrylic on canvas 66×99 inches
 
The artist has previously tested the printed and painted frames as a integral and compositional component of his portraiture dot paintings in his December 2006 exhibition, ‘About Faces’. Ironically, the frame subsumed the strength of the portrait and became part of the subject. But what if the frame, as an image representing a real and easily identifiable object, now surrounds a minimal field of color or an abstracted or otherwise not easily identifiable form or shape left to the viewer’s cognition, interpretation and imagination?; like amorphous or structured patterns of dots which have for so long stood boldly on their own merits, capturing the viewer’s complete field of vision without the constraints of a frame!

Last year Kolker photographed, at The Louvre, hundreds of paintings selected because of the particularities of their frames; such as gilding, tooling and ornate bas relief plaster motifs. This cohort of frames has become the subject of the instant experiment, questioning and testing how an image of a frame more than one or two hundred years senior to its youthful, contemporary and abstract dot painting, can marry each other on canvas, metaphorically. How does an abstract dot painting interact with the viewer when: insinuated into the constraints and boundaries of a trompe l’oeil ghost of a frame?; or when the frame is central and the dot painting both circumscribes and insinuates it?; or just circumscribes it?; or when the frame is a real three dimensional antique frame?

Among the sixty works in the exhibition is ‘the dot is in and framed!’, 2011, (depicted above) based on a photograph of the artist’s ‘tints and shades’ dot painting which was produced on a canvas of sufficient size to be insinuated into a nineteenth century gold leaf wood and plaster ornamental frame in the artist’s collection.

Paul Kolker: The Dot is In…Framed! — November 17, 2011 through February 17, 2012.

Press Release