Artist Statement

Color Theory refers to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon—a circular asymmetrical surveillance architecture with a central inspection tower that validates his Theory of Power. Subjects are free to circulate in the cells arranged at the periphery, but a powerful searchlight projected from the inspection tower blinds them, making it impossible to know if or when they are being surveilled. Panopticon derives from the Greek word "all seeing".

Assuming the constraints of power, subjects modify their behavior and participate in their own subjection.

Power becomes visible and unverifiable. Inmates are objects of information, never subjects in communication.  A “cruel and ingenious cage” according to French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1924), whose theories address institutional social control and authority without limits. An effective social control mechanism to obtain power of mind over mind. 

In the 1920s, the Cuban government built four Panoptic prisons, but Bentham’s physical architectural concept failed under the weight of overcrowding. However, the advent of television broadcasting marked a pivotal shift: the walls of the panopticon were replaced by the invisible reach of telecommunication towers, beaming light wavelengths onto willfully purchased screens in every home.

“Whoever controls the media controls the people”, Mashall McLuhan's first law of communication predicted.

Digital technology gave rise to passive viewership, behavioral surveillance, and mass media, placing screens as the dominant force shaping public opinion, serving as the modern architecture of mind control at a global scale.

Screen consumption borders on addiction.

In the review titled Television and the Quality of Life, published by the American Sociological Association, Robert Kubeyand and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from the Department of Media Studies at Rutgers University reported that Americans collectively consumed over 250 billion hours of television in 2000. The researchers identified five symptoms of dependency associated with screen viewing, surpassing the three symptoms required to diagnose clinical substance abuse.

The explosion of reality TV coincided with the events of September 11th, 2001, when the most televised catastrophe in history was broadcast live on television screens, deeply traumatizing a television-hooked nation and the entire world. In response, the Department of Justice, defending the rule of law, declared an Islamic jihad—a term Prophet Muhammad originally described as the inner struggle of a holy warrior in battle with himself.

Screens have seamlessly integrated into public and private spaces. They are extensions of our bodies. They track our every move. They influence our behavior, and our perception of reality.

My paintings use the colors of SMPTE color bars—standards established by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers—to question full-color screen indoctrination, digital surveillance, and asymmetrical data capture.

White 100 IRE. Yellow 69 IRE. Cyan 56 IRE. Green 48 IRE. Magenta 36 IRE. Red 28 IRE. Blue 15 IRE. Black 7.5 IRE.

Color bars, measured in IRE units (Institute of Radio Engineers), quantify luminance (grayscale contrast) and chrominance (hue saturation). They function as tools for screen calibration, detecting alterations in composite video signals, and guiding the adjustments needed to restore these signals to their original specifications.

Is your screen in sync with the colors of reality?