TECH-NÉ-COLOR
Untitled: Miami Beach
Nov 30 – Dec 4, 2016
For Untitled: Miami Beach 2016 Sandra Gering Inc. re-creates Tech-né-color, the gallery’s 2016 exhibition of work by Peter Halley, Todd James, KAWS, Ryan McGinness, Karim Rashid, John F. Simon, Jr., Vincent Szarek, Xavier Veilhan and Leo Villareal.
Observing the depth and variety of the use of color and technology in painting and sculpture has been a core interest to the gallery’s program since its inception. Taken separately, the two roles can seem like oil and water, their characteristics so incongruous that they warrant divided approaches. However, many artists have embraced this incongruity, with results that are not always obvious. Tech-né-color’s consideration presents examples of this subject from the gallery’s past and current programming. Tech (without the use of) color and color (born from) technology have a variety of overlap, aside from the photographic process most viewers recognize.
Examples include: Peter Halley’s use of fluorescent, Day-Glo and other computer-friendly colors and punchy graphics. At variance with this, Xavier Veilhan and KAWS make color choices in sculpture very selectively, their use of technology inherent in the realization of works that can only be created using the latest fabrication methods regardless of the actual materials. The software artist John F. Simon, Jr. incorporates the two themes even further, hybridizing sculpture and software code into a state where they become indistinguishable. Similarly, Leo Villareal starts with computer coding that allows for hundreds of thousands of color possibilities, building light and space works that are initiated with simple binary structures that, in essence, are colorless. Vincent Szarek approaches color conceptually, applying or removing it for symbolic effect. Finally, Todd James, Ryan McGinness and Karim Rashid consistently favor vivid, highly saturated colors in their work, and their painting or graphics highlight the divide between a visceral use of color and a more methodical one. The psychedelic qualities of each describe their common ground.