Bdbbdb pdf_arts journal ISSUE 3: BRAIN

Reviews

Xavier Jimenez: Full Color Beige Without Pink
Red, but Blue Gray (New York City - Gold Coast, Chicago)

It’s not often that an online archive of an exhibition should produce a crucial understanding of the original work. Convention has it that if you see the show in person, a website is of little use other than as a quick reference. That was my intention anyway, when I turned to New York City Gallery’s website to look up Xavier Jimenez’s November show, “Full Color Beige without Pink Red, but Blue Gray.” I wasn’t looking for resolution. I just wanted to refresh my memory so I could write about it. But the second viewing upset my original take altogether, so I had to chew on it.
Live, the show activated the apartment-gallery’s exhibition and domestic spaces with works dispersed throughout. Eccentricities of the space were heightened through careful arrangement and sudden discovery. One of my favorite moments was sighting “Cinderblock Print,” a mere impression mark left in the gallery’s carpet from what was unmistakably an arrangement of four heavy cinderblock bricks. Much of the work followed this vein- a kind of site-specific, juxtapositional gesturing of the same Duchampian lineage that bred Arte Povera, Robert Smithson, and Gedi Sibony.
Yet one group of paintings didn’t fit this framework at all. On the south wall of the main gallery there were one, two, three beige-y paintings in a row; all of them staking a claim on neutrality. These seemed so reserved compared to the spontaneous arrangements across the room. Nevertheless, as the show’s namesake, I felt drawn to them. But what sustained my interest was how subjective those so-called neutral paintings turned out to be.
For that series, Jimenez asked three fellow painters to mix their own go-to beige. He used the mixtures to cover each of the canvases and titled them respectfully, “Edmund Chia Beige,” “Jason Dunda Beige,” and “James Kao Beige.” The result of which of course was three very different paintings ranging in hue from mauve to green.
It struck me as odd how awfully didactic that work was. The rest of the exhibition showed no reserve in championing an individualistic aesthetic, but right away the beige paintings seemed aloof and pedagogical. Moreover, whereas the other works invited playful interaction, these seemed aimed only to demonstrate a point. In most cases, that hands-off posture would allude to an anti-formal distrust in subjectivity, but I find that hard to believe here. That’s not to say Jimenez is un-conceptual, or entirely pro-formal. I just believe he’s much too invested in the viewer’s exchange to be so unyielding.
And that is precisely what’s so interesting about the Beige project. Although it seems like a round about way to validate an inclination towards sensibility, that is exactly what the experiment upholds; that individual experience and partiality often trump analytical classification. Here we have an outright demonstration of neutrality failing. What was perceived as objective had rendered itself otherwise, showing in fact a large propensity for bias interpretation. And that slippage, pictured in the beige paintings, proved ever so slyly that flawed neutrality.
It’s perhaps presumptive, bestowing so much political weight to one color, especially one that is only on the verge of a firm political definition. Beige is a relatively shaky embodiment of neutrality. Its formal description in the U.S. has expanded in recent years to include a number of hues ranging from a yellowish cream to a light brown. As such, its designation as a purely “neutral” color is reasonably disputable. Gray on the other hand, with its inherent impartiality, being neither black nor white, remains the premier representation of true neutrality. That said, the color beige continues on, as if to signify a need for a warmer kind of neutral.
A better designation for beige might be natural, as its name originates from cloth left in its natural color. Neither dyed nor bleached, but left raw, beige might signify purity rather than impartiality. (Under such specification, we could look at Jimenez’s project in a different light, one no less hazardous, yet perhaps equally significant; that is the supposed purity found in flat, non-representational abstraction. But that’s something else altogether.) I want to return now to my second, virtual viewing of the show. As mentioned before, I needed to refresh my memory to write about the show and so sought clarification with the online archive. But to my utter bewilderment, the beige paintings were documented in black and white.
So resolute was I to prove Jimenez’s preference for individual experience that I didn’t for one second consider the change might be intentional. I thought first that my laptop screen was not calibrated correctly. Then, after checking on other computers, I began to think that it was some mistake of the gallery’s. But of course, that did not account for the fact that all the other work around the apartment was photographed in color. Finally, after appealing to the gallery director, I had to reconcile with the fact that the documentation was intentional. So, in the end I was forced to concede that my all my claims were ill founded. Jimenez, it would seem, was playing some cruel, disinterested game after all.
Still, something was off. Why go to all that trouble to distinguish three painters’ interpretations of a color if you were going to wipe it out with a grayscale image online? It seemed the most heinous offense, not to mention the inconsistency. Grayscale of course could only render an image’s value intensity, and so the three beige paintings were reduced to a mere distinction of lightness; no trace of warmth, just black, white, and every shade of gray in between.
My initial annoyance gave way to dignified resignation, and eventually to happy conclusion. After all, didn’t the absence of accurate documentation validate my presence at the opening and reinforce the performance aspect of the collaborative paintings? Those grey images online could never induce an adequate reliving of that first encounter.
That condition set by Jimenez specifically not to document the beige paintings in color was, I think, a defiant move aimed at highlighting the very differences between the categories beige and gray, and consequently… subjectivity and objectivity. Because, if we are to learn anything from the image’s transfer to grayscale, it is that there exists a correct way in which to do it. There is a system in place for rendering colored images gray and by contrast, there is virtually no correct way to produce a beige. That remains an entirely subjective endeavor, which is of course, anything but neutral.

KAYLEE RAE WYANT