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July 6 – August 4, 2005
In “Outside The Box” the members of Pharmaka went as a group to paint in the High Desert near Joshua Tree. Now, in BLUE, the group have set themselves a task that is apparently as simple: To each create a painting about the color blue, or the idea of blue. As before, this simple jumping off point is more about the dialogue it creates than the end result, for our commitment, as members of Pharmaka is to create an artistic discussion among ourselves, and then open that dialogue to the public.
Pharmaka’s participating artists are Fumiko Amano, Randall Cabe, Christopher Cousins, Stanley Dorfman, Shane Guffogg, Patricia Howard, Tim Isham, Maureen Maki, Christopher Monger, Ana Osgood, Michael Rosenfeld, Luke Rothschild, John Scane, and Vonn Cummings Sumner.
We sing of ‘my blue heaven’ and love the deep blue sea, but when we are sad we have the blues, and when we are hoarse and unheard we are blue in the face. To talk fast is to talk a blue streak, when something comes from nowhere, it comes from out of the blue.Is there another color in the English language that has so many uses, so many associations – and apparent contradictions? To have blue blood is deemed an asset, even a compliment. To describe a stock as blue chip is to assert its worth over time. But blue language and blue movies imply something other, antisocial, if not outright pornographic. A blue-collar worker describes the working class from which all good Americans seek to pull themselves – and yet a Blue Ribbon denotes success and excellence.
In American politics the color is associated with the Democrats, whereas in most of Northern Europe it is the color of the Right-wing political parties.The paradoxes continue in the fine arts: Blue is considered the color of sadness and introspection. But blue is also the color of serenity, and Royalty. In Ancient Egypt the Lapis Lazuli pigment was so highly prized as to be reserved only for Pharoahs. In Renaissance iconography blue was the color of the Virgin. In Picasso it is the color of the beggar.
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