#artistsusingcolor

Artist Spotlight: Peter Halley

a few selected excerpts from an interview of the artist with Kathryn Hixon in 1992…

KH… You began using Day-Glo colours in 1981 and 1982. Why did you decide to use Day-Glo pigment straight out of the jar?

PH…The work has always had a cinematic or narrative quality. Specifically I began to think that some form of energy was moving through the conduits and illuminating the cells. I started using Day-Glo red to make the cells glow. I was trying to emphasize technologically derived materials and I also liked Day-Glo’s connection to Pop and Psychedelia, in a nostalgic sense. The quality of the glow that it produced seemed very artificial, unnatural and eerie to me. In a quite traditional way, I have always been interested in light in painting.

KH…How would you describe the interactions of colours that you use?

PH…It is not about colour, but rather how the color combines. It is entirely linguistic.

KH…Within traditional painting, do you think of the colors associations with different aspects of culture? Putting a dull brown next to a pale blue is almost nauseating.

PH…After I do them I sometimes think of the associations with bad taste. But what really specifically interests me is that the use of colour can be transgressive. I find it exciting if I can make some awkward colour or combination of colours work. The other thing I have been intersted in since 1988 is the idea of spatial ambiguity, a confusion between background and form, that’s like the phenomenon of synaesthesia or psychedelic overload.

KH…Each of your paintings is viscerally direct and has immediate impact as a unifed whole.

PH…I strongly believe in making art that cna be looked at quickly. We live in a society of informational and cultural overload. The idea of a Cezanne, for example, which you can study for hours and various nuances are revealed seems out of touch, at least with my own psychic life. I want to make something explosive and immediate. And hopefully explosive and immediate each time you go by and take a quick look at it.

interview bits sourced from page 199-201 of “COLOUR” Edited by David Batchelor from the Documents of Contemporary Art book series published by Whitechapel and the MIT Press.

images above are all works by Peter Halley:

Yellow Cell with Conduits, 1985, Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic and Roll-a-Tex on canvas, 64 x 72 inches

A Monstrous Paradox, 1989, Acrylic, fluorescent acrylic and Roll-a-Tex on canvas, 90 ¼ x 195 inches

“A Color Removed” by Michael Rakowitz

I came across an installation of orange objects by artists Michael Rakowitz in the October issue of Art in America. It was an exhibition that was part of Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art on view July 14th to September 30th around Cleveland, Ohio.

It seemed to me like an interesting way that color is being used by a contemporary artist.

From the projects website:

"If you want to know how a system works, introduce a coloring agent." -Emily Binet Royall A Color Removed is a city-wide participatory project grounded in the impossible gesture of removing the color orange from Cleveland and suspending its future use. The presence of orange, as a symbol of safety, encourages complacency. But what if we could trust that safety is a right guaranteed to everyone who travels in, through, and around Cleveland? What if orange was rendered superfluous? A Color Removed addresses the underlying questions regarding the right to safety by encouraging community members to deconstruct its symbols and create solidarity for a more peaceful city. A Color Removed formally commenced with a public letter writing campaign in the fall of 2017 and continues with an open call for orange objects to be accumulated in collection bins installed throughout Cleveland. Clothing, toys, sports equipment, household items, etc. will be catalogued and displayed at SPACES from July 15 to September 30, 2018. The enlistment of community members in surrendering orange objects and developing responses to the supersaturated orange display at SPACES is an invitation to a difficult and ongoing conversation around the forces that shape safety in American cities, including gun violence and community-police relations, as well as the overlapping impacts connecting characteristics that are targeted for oppression. Facilitated discussions and workshops will be conducted by partner organizations, project collaborators, and neighbors, and housed within the monochrome A Color Removed display at SPACES, where fearless listening enables fearless speaking. A Color Removed was conceived by Michael Rakowitz, as a response to the shooting of Tamir Rice by Cleveland police, and was debuted as a call to action during his 2015 Beamer-Schneider Lecture at Case Western Reserve University. In response to community feedback and the involvement of the Rice family, the project evolved to include a group exhibition of newly commissioned works by Cleveland-based artists who have long explored the conceptual underpinnings of A Color Removed in their work: Amber N. Ford, Amanda King and Shooting Without Bullets youth photographers, M. Carmen Lane, and RA Washington of Guide to Kulchur Learn House. Additional collaborators include Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Amir Berbic, Christopher Horne, Elaine Hullihen, Kelley O'Brien & Anthony Warnick of The Muted Horn, and Samaria Rice & The Tamir Rice Foundation. The project is organized by SPACES and presented as part of FRONT International, An American City: 11 Cultural Exercises, taking place July 14 - September 30, 2018.

#artistsusingcolor is a hashtag I’ll use here to collect images that cross my path that seem to include a use of color by artists or designers that seems of use to my color research and thinking in some way. Sometimes I’ll elaborate on my particular interest and sometimes I’ll just post without explanation, a more intuitive investigation. This particular post is largely functioning to get this idea tangible and moving forward. These images are all lifted from the internet and were in various folders saved on my computer from previous research in other contexts that I thought could also exist with teamcolorful.

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