Lustre of Cobalt: Ethan Platt | Project Gallery Exhibition

Lustre of Cobalt considers the historic pursuit of figurative painting within a contemporary digital context.  Each painting references an image that has been rendered by the artist digitally first, marking a translation from machine rendering to human representation of the body.  This process emphasizes a collaboration between the artist and computer to explore methods of depicting the figure in the present day. Ethan Platt utilizes cobalt as a centering element in this exhibition to connect the historic medium of pigment with the mechanical components of digital space.  Cobalt serves diverse roles in historic and present-day culture from its first use in ancient Mesopotamia blue glass to the invention of cobalt pigments in the early 1800’s influencing the impressionist painters, and now in its role powering electronic devices.  This metal’s multifaceted significance has been symbolically and physically embedded into Platt’s hyper-synthetic compositions, reflecting our current position in the narrative of human existence.