Red White Blue (2000-08)
Painted canvas, neon, and mirrors | Each: 1x1m
In False Start, 1959, Jasper Johns painted words of different colors with non-matching pigments to undermine the conditions of painting itself. I have made these neon paintings on canvas using neon light that does not match the meaning of the color word they represent. Red in the color blue on a white canvas and white in blue neon on a red canvas. This method is also found in the Stroop Test which is a psychological test used for testing attention. Subjects must decide on the color the word signifies and the quickness of their response is measured as a reaction time. Individuals with Attention Deficit Disorder and women with Anorexia score poorly on this test. The title of this work is a response to the 8 years of the Bush Presidency where methods that confuse attention are used to undermine the real truth of sovereign decisions leaving the multitude in a state of continual agnosia. The optical inability to make sense out of or perceive objects and events in space and time are leading to a type of blindness. Painting here is a method to penetrate the institutional understanding that acts to suffocate freedom. I am trying to make painting a form of resistance by foregrounding these methods in the aesthetic context through the history of painting.