Color Theory (2011 - Ongoing)

Video, performance, acrylic paint and mix media on canvas.

Color Theory summarizes my ongoing critical research on the role full color screens play in our construct of reality.

“Morals reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated”, Color Theory makes reference to Jeremy Bentham, 18th-century British social reformer, who materialized his Theory of Power with the Panopticon. Asymmetrical surveillance architecture with cells arraigned at the periphery and an inspection tower at the center. Subjects are free to circulate, they are however blinded by an intense light dominating the tower. Power becomes visible and unverifiable. A “cruel and ingenious cage”, according to Foucault, where inmates are objects of information, never subjects in communication. Assuming the constraints of power, they modify their behavior, and participate in their own subjection. A social control mechanism that allows to obtain power of mind over mind. 

Technology dematerialized the panopticon into miniaturized satellite-monitored screen mediated smart devices. “Whoever controls the media controls the people”, Mashall McLuhan's first law of communication predicted. Now normalized in public and private spaces, screens have become extensions of our bodies. They track our every move, modify our behavior and alter our perception of reality; suggesting that whoever controls the screen controls our future. 

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) refer to SMPTE color bars as engineering guidelines that measure how digital signals may have been altered and what adjustments must be made to bring them back to specs. My paintings use SMPTE colors to question full-color screen indoctrination, digital surveillance, and asymmetrical data capture.