Never Underestimate a Monochrome

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David Batchelor (2012)

"My starting point, a few years ago, was that any one can make a monochrome, and that anyone who has painted a door has already made a monochrome, whether they were aware of it or not. Then I came to realise that monochromes do not require anyone to make them, as the streets make their own monochromes. They only need to be noticed. I began noticing monochromes in the streets of London and other cities about sixteen years ago, and I began to photograph them so as to have a record of these temporary, fleeting and ephemeral events. I have also made many monochromes in the studio. These are all three-dimensional and I have never made a monochrome painting. Nevertheless, photographs I take and the sculptures I make refer more to painting than to photography or sculpture, whereas the paintings and drawings I make refer mostly to the idea of sculpture. Pinkoblob is not a monochrome painting, it is a painting of a monochrome sculpture, but one that will only ever exist as a painting."
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Babak Golkar (2012)

"Created for Never Underestimate the Monochrome, my work Blocked Square (2012) is a partially painted Persian carpet. With the exception of the center, which is masked out in the shape of a square, the rest of the carpet is covered in layers of white paint. This masking creates a white border around the carpet and opens up a window to the colorful geometric and abstract patterns already existing in the carpet. The configuration of the squares intentionally relates to one of Kazimir Malevich's geometric abstract paintings, Black Square. Done in 1913, Black Square symbolically moves away from representation towards the language of modern abstraction. What Malevich called Suprematism was meant to be supreme over other forms of art prior to it, but what is also significant is his term Zero of Form, which he associated with Black Square. Zero of Form suggests both a point of departure but also a void in terms of form, empty and at the same time saturated. The experimentation with form and color, simultaneous void and fullness, emptiness and richness are the basis of my Blocked Square. This work is a continuation of my Imposition series, which I started in 2007 by covering Persian carpets with a single color. Blocked Square highlights the often ignored carpet by an act of defacement while opening a window that invites viewers to contemplate the cultural aspects of abstract patterns."
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Odili Donald Odita (2012)

"I see the monochrome project as a universal project. It is a space for every person, where every artist can experience themselves at their fullest potential in a color space of utmost possibility. The monochrome can exist anywhere and in anyplace. And its meaning can change anytime, however it exists. In my case, the monochrome is the ground and beginning of my own interconnected, chromatic universe."
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Pineapple Park (2012)

"After lengthy discussion, the instruction that Pineapple Park chose to produce a work for this project was-naturally-"Make a monochrome painting with your own instructions." For us, our instruction was to simply make a monochrome painting, and to explore what it means for an object to be monochromatic. Pineapple Park came to the conclusion that an object needs to be one colour in totality in order to qualify as monochromatic. If a piece of clothing is yellow, we say, "This t-shirt is yellow." Thus, the item of clothing and the colour are one. The object is the colour. Our contribution to the exhibition is a painting titled Yellow Canvas. The canvas is painted yellow not only on the front, but also the sides and back. The canvas is yellow in totality; the canvas and the colour yellow are one."
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Sherwin Tibayan (2012)

"For Never Underestimate a Monochrome I wanted to find an object that would place formal limitations on my construction. I decided to use a small green cutting mat with its existing grid pattern and applied units of red and blue acrylic paint. The pattern established within the confines of the cutting mat grid is a representation of the Bayer filter mosaic. This array—composed of units of 4 cells with two green, one blue, and one red—comprise the vast majority of all digital image sensors. All digitized images, including this of my painted cutting mat, exist as arrangements of related monochromatic elements. So in trying to imagine the collaborative craft and digital nature of Never Underestimate a Monochrome, the Bayer array suggested a fitting way to both measure and expose the very conditions under which I'm able to participate."
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Patricia Zarate (2012)

"For Never Underestimate a Monochrome, I thought of the music I've been listening to of late. Jazz singers…I put on Abbey Lincoln, and each song resonated with the sadness I was feeling. I decided to make a work with the text from Bird Alone."
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Horacio Zabala (2012)

"My monochrome Hypothesis III is repurposed from a series titled Serie de las Hipótesis, in which I explore the relationship between the monochrome and grammatical or mathematical signs. Even though the last two are univocal and visible, my interest is not only aimed toward what is visible, but toward thoughts on what is visible. The least visible is what is uncared for, durable and unpredictable. In general terms, visual and conceptual relations illuminate and demarcate, signal and fraction, complement and equalize, reflect and connect, multiply and change images and things between real, imaginary and symbolic worlds. I'm interested more in the relationship between things and images than in things and images by themselves. I rehearse these relationships, exercising what might come out of the desire to signal or solve something. But ultimately my monochromes are exercises that don't really signal or solve anything. They end up being "returns" or "translations" of questions, doubts, or issues aimed at the viewer as much as at myself."
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