303 Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new work by Marina Pinsky. Based on color comparison tools used in the field, the home and the body - as regimented by the food industry - Pinsky has created a series of colorful, hand-painted sculptural objects.
The Forel-Ule scale is a color gradient used to monitor the quality of natural waters in oceanography and related fields. The original color scale is made up of precisely dyed liquids in small glass vials, which the observer uses as a comparison chart to the waterway being studied. In the last several years, multiple scientists and educators have released scientific papers detailing how “citizen scientists” can make their own water measurement devices with accessible materials such as photographic gels and 3D printed plans. In the work Plein Air (Forel-Ule-Scale Fan), Pinsky interprets the colors of the glass vials and the photographic filters into a third scale by painting the translucent colors on fan blades made of water-jet cut glass.
Pinsky continued this procedure for a series of painted glass fans based on various color comparators for testing concentrations of specific chemical impurities in water. These are arranged in the gallery in opposing CMY and RGB shades. In Plein Air (SalmoFan) Pinsky paints the optical range used by the aquaculture industry to dye farmed salmon flesh with Canthaxanthin to match consumer color preferences.
The Forel-Ule Scale returns in the 13-Month Calendar Clock, a digitally embroidered work based on a calendar system actively promoted by industrialists of the early 20th century, which consisted of thirteen months of exactly 28 days plus one “year day”. Largely supported by George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, the International Fixed Calendar League unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to adopt this new division of time for general use.
Pinsky’s painted objects continue a historical/chemical excavation unearthed during her work on the 2016 exhibition Dyed Channel at Kunsthalle Basel, its title based on the 1986 Sandoz chemical disaster which colored the Rhine river red. Through her research, a through-line began to emerge between medicine, agribusiness and photographic technology which has informed many of her works since.
‘Marina Pinsky, Reagent’ will open at 303 Gallery on March 5th, and will be on view through April 1, 2022. This body of work first appeared as part of Pinsky’s solo exhibition ‘Marina Pinsky, Undertow‘ at Simian, Copenhagen in 2021.