CHRIS COSTAN

selected rogue interventions: an ongoing, public project

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.

In the past 10 years, many of us have found ourselves in the midst of the roiling waters of discord. That increased existential nature of these days has brought me to refer to these conditions in a segment of my work. I’ve returned (from my day job) to using the Pantone System again, as a tool but not as a design tool.
With these unsanctioned interventions, I take the whimsy, practicality and the commerciality out of the Pantone System applying its structure to illustrate important issues. For example, the world’s need for generous human ethics, an honorable belief system, as well as the precarious state of the earth’s waterways and oceans. In one case, I use Ernest Hemingway’s views on bullfighting inferring a generalized cruelty towards earthly living creatures while in another case, the transitory nature of geological formations and change in Continental Drift. In other interventions, I allude to the conquering of nations or the story of Moby Dick (The White Whale), exemplifying the creativity of humans (the creator, Herman Melville), combined with the human trait of vengeance, in Captain Ahab.

For me, the drive to make art always involved irony/complexity, humor, absurdity and visual delight, and it still does. But I needed to find a way to also work on thinking about world problems and the complexity of how we with ourselves, how we live in society and on the earth.
The sentiment you would find in these unsanctioned interventions which are intended to be public works, has become a newer direction. Each of the interventions created, comments on international or existential concerns and personal codes by using color, image and pattern as “symbol” (a la Pantone). Since 2019 while using this Pantone format, each idea is established with explanatory text under the image. Each piece mimics but subverts the Pantone Color System with a distinct personal or topical issue. The different works shift from the emotional to the political…to the realm of the art idea. Each narrative creates a record of my experiences and viewpoints. The project” becomes a collection of thoughts in the style of a diary, however, a potential way to expose the diary in public spaces.

Below is just a sampling of approximately 180 interventions made and installed in public settings since 2019.

Materials such as; gesso, acrylic paint, oil stick, paillettes, ink, stickers. gold leaf, sequined braid, gold braid, the artist’s hair, dog hair, vinyl, hand printed montage/collage, sewing notions and ink on paper

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