CHRIS COSTAN

selected interventions/public art

Working as a Color Designer/Trend Specialist for a fashion brand (as my day job), the color palette was a serious affair. I analyzed how/why people were wearing types of clothing/styles or particular colors at any given moment. I was an informed “spinner” of interesting tales on trending colors for merchandisers, sales accounts, and the sales associates found in the retail stores. Using the Pantone Color System (the standardized color matching method, used commercially and internationally) aided me in the job of giving my colleagues a sense of why I was recommending one color over another during a particular season.

We are in the midst, of roiling waters of discord. In a strange way, the existential nature of current days has brought me back to the Pantone System. With these unsanctioned interventions, I take the whimsy and practicality out of this color system and apply the system to graver issues like the need for human values or climate change destruction or human dominion over the natural world.

For me, the appeal of art-making always involved irony/complexity, humor, absurdity and visual delight. This manner of working has shifted and is steeped in a moment of worldwide hardship and unrelenting change. The subdued sentiment found in these unsanctioned interventions has become critical for me. Each of the interventions comment on international concerns and personal codes by using color, image and pattern as “symbol” (a la Pantone) since 2019. Using a casual format, the individual often existential theme or idea is established. Each piece in the series includes explanatory text on its face and mimics but subverts the Pantone Color System, In each case, a distinct personal or topical issue is indicated. And, each piece shifts from the emotional to the political…to the realm of the art idea. The “whole” becomes a collection of thoughts in the style of a diary. The different narratives create a record of one person’s experience.

Click any image below to learn more about individual interventions pictured.