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Metaphor is being used to sell paint in these plywood strips and swatches. (courtesy CRC Gallery) |
| "These colors, which would seem to belong to everyone, are labeled,
coded and packaged for sale." by Craig Kellogg In the world of house paint, a rose is a Rose or a Rouge or even a Red. When a company calls a green Forever or names a particular beige Solitude, metaphor is being used to sell paint. "It's poetry written by commerce," explains 35-year-old artist Peter Wegner. "These colors, which would seem to belong to everyone, are labeled, coded, and packaged" for sale. Wegner discovered that most American commercial paint colors come from a handful of systems developed by consultants; retailers can simply buy access to lists of formulas with names and numbers and start mixing gallon-size cans. In an exhibition last spring at Manhattan's CRG Gallery (and another this fall at the Todd Hosselt Gallery in San Francisco), the painter approximated consultants' colors on large, carefully labeled plywood strips and swatches. As in his earlier work--compositions of typefaces lifted directly from a type specimen book--these paintings "show just how loosely related language is to experience." Sly adjacencies, like True Blue paired with a nearly indistinguishable Real Blue, make his point nicely. The more colors and color systems Wegner sees, the less sense the names make to him. Reality "consistently overwhelms our preconceptions," he says--any word used to describe the color of a rose proves inadequate in the presence of that rose. So when asked the color of his house in Portland, Oregon, he pauses. Is it Bungalow, or Domicile? "I don't know," he says. "It's a noncolor similar to a Band-Aid." Well, what did it say on the chip? "The truth is the exterior was already painted when we moved in." |
Keywords:
paint, color, names
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