The exhibition titled “Color Matters” at Galerie Richard from October 26 to November 17 gathers seven painters: Koen Delaere, Carl Fudge, Dennis Hollingsworth, Kim Young-Hun, Jamie Martinez, Noriko Mizokawa, and Joseph Nechvatal. The title is inspired by the Summer group show “Position Matters”, curated by Saul Ostrow at Galerie Richard. “Color Matters” continues the investigation of major elements which define an artwork. Both exhibitions emphasize the diversity of artistic choices and the singularity of each artist.

At the entrance of the gallery there is a dialogue between the paintings of Kim Young-Hun and the paintings of Dennis Hollingsworth. These two painters have diametrically opposed attitudes about the third physical dimension of a painting. Kim Young-Hun’s paintings combine a traditional Korean painting technique called Hyukpil, that uses a leather ink brush with contemporary post abstract painting language. The stripes are made mostly by one continuous brush stroke across the canvas, with the oil colors melting together and flowing like ink. By having just one layer of paint the artist keeps the trace of his trembling brush strokes while having the glossy shallow depth of a screen. At the opposite side, the paintings by Dennis Hollingsworth are also very distinctive as he directly sculpts the oil paint on the canvas, or on another support before placing it on the canvas. Both artists were born in between the analog generation and the digital generation. They are both using the two sets of colors from the analog and from the digital world. On a white background, the saturated pink and green are deliberately a visual colored signature of Kim’s digital paintings. Nevertheless, we also find beautiful soft yellows, light blues, greys, and lavender, which seem more connected to nature. The palette of colors by Dennis Hollingsworth is already a little bit more classic as he works directly on the cotton canvas. He excels in the combinations of dark green and violets, a touch of white and colorful vibrant and saturated yellows. He combines both glossy and matte colors in his paintings.

The second space of the gallery hosts a close dialogue between Carl Fudge’s new digital screen prints and Jamie Martinez’s digital paintings. It is a fascinating confrontation between the square and the triangle. Part of the Post Digital Painting’s historical show at the Cranbrook Museum in 2002-3, Carl Fudge from his beginnings has digitally manipulated images in his paintings. It was a necessity for him to reexamine the meaning of a digital painting. He concluded that a digital image is defined by pixels. Recently he presented black paintings made with sandpaper of different shades, black and white woodcut prints and mostly black screen prints. For this group show he brought new colorful screen prints. Some screen prints seem similar at first glance but it is very interesting to notice the differences related to the shapes and rhythm of the composition. As well as the differences due to a slight difference of the color arrangement. Born in Colombia and living in New York, Jamie Martinez is a digital painter who executes the concept of Triangulation throughout his work. Triangulation is the formation of or division into triangles. His paintings are only composed of triangles. At the opposite of the square and the circle, the triangle takes an infinite variety of shapes. It always gets at least one diagonal, which brings dynamism. The triangle also suggests a perspective. The triangle is associated with the theory of fractals. His paintings can be seen as an accumulation of precious or semi-precious stones with different shades of colors due to reflections and transparencies. Therefore, Jamie Martinez’s paintings are very complex. In his best works you can feel a sense of vertigo, which is the ultimate visual success of Baroque painting and architecture. As for color, the difference between the works of these two painters is the size of the range of colors. Carl Fudge uses a limited number of colors due to the print process, while Jamie Martinez takes advantage of the freedom of the paint technique.

The last room brings together three artists, Joseph Nechvatal, Noriko Mizokawa, and Koen Delaere. The room is perfectly balanced with four medium sized paintings by Joseph Nechvatal and by Noriko Mizokawa and three large paintings by Koen Delaere. Joseph Nechvatal is a digital painter pioneer. His process of painting, where he implements a digital virus into an image of the body, has been described extensively in all his reviews and exhibition. The focus on his range of colors has never been the central point of his reviews. His signature range of colors is based on a light red and the colors associated such as: orange, pink, violet and brown. His palette relates to the colors of the human body, internal and external. While visiting Europe he spent time in Italy and Greece where he enjoyed the washed-out colors of Antique mural paintings. With his washed-out colors, he puts in perspective the importance of a specific moment to the consideration of a testimony for a long period of time.

Noriko Mizokawa is a Japanese painter who has established her reputation in Japan and France with paintings mixing calligraphic gestural abstraction with a figurative and elusive representation of female nudes. These new works titled “The Origin of the World” in reference to the famous painting by Edouard Courbet presented is for the first time worldwide. Noriko Mizokawa draws first with her finger on her cell phone. This explains the range of colors as well as the verticality of their format. Then she spends a lot of time carefully painting them on canvas. The representation is similar: a large irregular oval shape, a long contortioned rounded shape with all of the rainbow colors is positioned in a large variety of positions, and red circled dots, which the artist added in order to add energy. If the enigmatic subject is similar, the difference is made by the arrangement of colors. Her colors embrace bright to pastel and metallic colors and each painting has a unique unexpected and refined arrangement of colors.

Delaere’s paintings are the result of a physical and energetic interaction with the material: canvas, thick layers of paint, colors and textures. First the artist makes the geometrical deep layer of translucent paint lines on the white canvas. These lines create a pattern that serves as an underpainting. Then Delaere impulsively adds oil paints to the work, which results in the streams of paint throughout the composition. He experiments with this process with a wide range of color combinations. The color combination is different every time, but they follow the same procedure. His palette of colors ranges from pastel colors to fluorescent colors which makes each work very unique.