by Lisa Kurzner,
independent curator and writer
Essay taken from Color Recordings brochure 2006 |
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Imagine Kathryn Refi's
studio as a strategic nerve center of maps, lists and treatises
outlining various journeys, from a trip to the grocery store to
maneuvers in outer space. Her work investigates a particular problem:
how to best define herself amidst the chaos and happenstance of
daily life. It is an autobiographical practice that tangentially
includes others as reference points. She sets parameters, casting
a wide enough net to capture patterns and differences that provide
the stuff of art. After playing out the hand, she can observe
the results, leaving their interpretation to others.
Refi's latest work, Color Recordings (2005-2006), puts a new spin
on her self-analytical process. The seven mural-sized oil paintings
(61 x 100 inches each) consist of vertical stripes whose patterns
represent the prevailing colors Refi experienced during each of
seven days of a week. The recordings refer to a video tape made
while she wore a small camera strapped to her head during all
waking hours of the days described. Snippets of raw video material
reveal mundane rituals of life, from teeth brushing to dog walking
to sitting in the laundromat. A computer program tailored to the
project allowed the artist to analyze the color content of her
days into separate segments reflecting any of seven hundred twenty-nine
colors she identified for this purpose. The data was then compiled
into print outs which allowed her to determine the amount of each
color to be represented in the paintings. Any color with a pixel
count above 0.125% of the day's total was realized in paint. As
in all Refi's work, the random intersects with the artist's universe
and the end results are surprising even to Refi.
Following years of work made primarily in black and white, Refi
took on color directly as the subject of this project. In these
paintings, color is determined by cultural process rather than
by any formalist considerations. For all the time she spent outdoors,
Refi's hours at work and in dimly lit bars trumped the greenery
producing a series of striped paintings in somber tones. Browns,
plums, and almost-blacks envelope thin slices of sky blue and
pale green. Although Refi could tweak selection within her prescribed
system, the structure was deliberately put in place to avoid judging
color on emotional terms. Created after the conscious lessons
of postmodernism, the seven paintings in this exhibition are compelling
in that they subvert visual expectations of the chosen large-scale
format with their tones of quiet secrecy.
The serial, repetitive nature of Refi's work derives not only
from a clinical urge, but also from a desire to define that region
between the earthly and the absolute. Her work asks: how can one
account for that which cannot be measured? As many artists of
the minimalist generation have done, Refi relies on systemic strategies
to realize artistic ends. What seems scientific in the work -
the statistics, reports, visual documents - is in fact subjective
information that attempts to define what we can never know. In
the end, the journey, the process is what interests Refi and her
viewers. |