The Chromatic number of objects in a room
Susan Gargiulo and Troy Hagenbart
Opening reception Sunday August 29th, 3pm – 8pm
Exhibition continues through 09/24/10 by appointment
The chromatic number of graph G is the smallest number of colors y (G) needed to color the vertices of G so that no two adjacent vertices share the same color (Skiena 1990, p. 210).
This is similar to the method that is used to color a map, where each face of a country is colored differently to those adjacent to it.
I suppose I would start with an anxiety about belief or at least with an anxiety about the assumption that something has to be believable, not everything can be a falsehood.
The setup is easy enough.
In thinking about making work in a home setting I simply went with the obvious and wanted to create a living room. I immediately looked back to a memory of what a living room usually or once consisted of. The objects appeared to me very quickly.
I begin with a couch, being the bulkiest of any object in a room; from it all the other objects seem to revolve. The couch shares many traits to a chair, maybe a chair extended. A chair holds many qualities of a table. In the simple step of erasing the back of a chair you can be left with a table or the representation of a table. It occurred to me that many objects in a room could be placed in line with one another, erasing parts and accentuating others. Objects can associate themselves with other objects. On the table is a bowl of diamonds made from aluminum foil. A simple construction but the association is two-fold, a candy in a wrapper and a diamond by design.
Above the couch is a railing, constructed from 3 main parts. First, a typical but complex wooden railing covered in aluminum and paint. Its form, molded to the shape of a hand, becomes ornate outside of its function. Attached are two cylindrical forms, one of wood the other of chromed steel. The wooden rod is also covered in aluminum and paint. Together the 3 pose a relationship of similarities. The most obvious being the form and materials used. The ornate wooden form with the reflective tape is meant to mimic the activity of the chromed steel. The chromed railing pulls the reflection to the furthest edges of odd lines of definition; the molded edges are an extreme example of this act.
Above the railing are 2 identical images of loons, both paint-by-number. One executed in the prescribed fashion and the other in the form of a gray scale. This is my attempt to equate an image to the conditions imposed by chromed steel. There is always a loss of information in a reflective surface and I believe we should be thankful to this; otherwise we might lose the barrier of exterior from interior of a shop window. In the end both paintings do represent the image given but the question of what constitutes the object named is addressed. The distortion can be clearly described but the steps from one to the other can fall in line with associating a table with a chair. It is a simple twist of parts of the object made.
This goes inline with the steps of identifying a chair from a table. In an attempt to further complicate this idea I have constructed a mirror, or at least my notion of the function of a mirror: Wall molding, laminated to a frame and covered it with aluminum; a surface that reflects but ultimately distorts. Attached is a plank of wood, painted with the profile of the molded form. The effect, in parts, created by the flat painted form of the profile reflected in its three dimensional form is a reflection of a straight line
The mirror extends itself to an association of other forms of display, namely a newspaper and a television. These are the final objects in this room. The newspaper is a collection of writings about chrome, mostly collected from people I know and some appropriated from other sources. In posing the simple and open task of writing about chrome a variety of themes and styles have been offered.
On the television is an animation, a new challenge. Through distress, struggle and thoughts about chrome and graph theory came an animation about static. Static can be said to be a lost article of television but ultimately it is a loss of signal. In a stop motion animation of small 1 ¼ “ blocks painted white with gray dots, the illusion of static worked well enough but seemed a bit redundant. To pull the original question of objects being similar to one another to light, I have made crude dot drawings of the objects in the room with black dots on the gray static. Accompanying the animation is an original score by Daniel Blake, a fantastic improve saxophone player who added to the dimension of time and shape of the piece.
All in all it comes down to the quote below the header of the Chrome newspaper: Some see personally, some see infinity, some see in chrome. If you place your finger on a chrome railing you can see finger reflected, a bit distorted but it is there. If you look outside your finger you can see a collection of what surrounds you. But if you look somewhat out of focus you can see the surface of just chrome.
