Fixated on a Spectrum

Christopher Derek Bruno makes turns permanence out of the ephemeral in his exhibition, if/then/yes/and, at Greg Kucera Gallery. He crystallizes momentary sensations, like a sunset, into permanent art objects.

The formulaic title told me most I needed to know about the attitude of the show: I expected precision. You know, coding? In the simplest way, you can use this formula in excel spreadsheets. I know Bruno’s work to be invested in color fields, creating immersive experiences through fabrication and programmed machines. You might have seen his installation at the Railspur Building in Pioneer Square: an exterior staircase encased in glass with a transparent rainbow filling the length of the space, each landing a new color experience in which to view the surrounding streets through. My personal favorite project of his occupied th Railspur building as well, a room full of gradient printed tents at Forest for the Trees in 2023, calling attention to the homelessness experienced in the PNW.

This investigation of color and space continues in his newest body of work at Greg Kucera Gallery. It is a habit for me to get as close as possible to the work, and the Moiré patterns vibrating across the surfaces of Bruno’s works insinuated his fine details. I immediately thought of Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawings, specifically one I experienced at Dia:Beacon in 2017. Lewitt’s work is actually just a plan on paper when a Museum acquires it; an entrusted team of draftsmen execute the drawing on the wall. Long lines in just three colors, red, yellow, and blue, extend for tens of feet, starting and stopping colors and changing directions to create a grid of squares in different hues. Walking up to it, the lines become clearer. Both Lewitt and Bruno rushed a memory to the front of my mind, of pressing my face into the tube TV I grew up with. I would slowly approach the screen and watch the color disintegrate into tiny dancing pixels, completely entranced by the visual noise wrapped around my eyeball until it became uncomfortable, or a parent pried me away from the screen.

Sol Lewitt at Dia Beacon.

Detail of Sol Lewitt at Dia Beacon.

Leaning in close to some of Bruno’s works, an array of plus signs burst in front of my eyes. Some disintegrated and pixelated into tiny squares. I wish the labels told me the approximate quantity of pixels composing the gradients. The tantalizing realization was finding it is also just three simple colors that are utilized: red, yellow, blue. In some instances, the edges of the mark created by the latex printer can be seen. Other times, they are entirely obliterated.

Detail of Bruno’s work. All photos provided by the author.

Bruno’s works are classified into two separate categories: PLANAR STUDY and INCIDENTAL WORK. The Planar Studies are all leaning Acrylic Panels, one appears with another slid behind it. I was looking up the materials in the middle of the gallery to understand how these were assembled. The pixels look like they are trapped between multiple layers of the acrylic, though on in my close and careful inspection, as my flourescent orange trucker hat I am sporting today reflects back to me from the surface, I imagine it is a PET film backing to the panel (I had to look up PET film).

Whether I am wrong or right, Bruno’s work executes the same wild spectrum of blue to red to yellow in a transparent manner, the pattern cascades onto the wall behind the works. In the case of INCIDENTAL WORKs, the colors blend between multiple panels aligned inches apart.

While the spectrum is expansive to include greens and oranges, I did wonder, what if there were a purple present that made me say “that shade is everything?” Or, a real campy Magenta. I am happy settling for these colors, and living for the execution of it. Writing this down I joke I am writing like this because it is Pride month.

The execution of the work is as methodical as neighboring artist Anthony White. His show Somethin’ Somethin’ in the front gallery of Greg Kucera house is ornately and meticulously fabricated “paintings” made up of PLA (3-D plastic laid down line by line by White’s hand, through a 3-D printer pen). That meticulousness was harnessed in Bruno’s work in a much more meditative sense. Between the excessive iconography in White’s work, and Bruno’s multitude of material and layered processes, I was basically googling everything. The serenity of colors in if/then/yes/and became a reprieve from the cacophony of White’s work.

Still, poetic parallels radiate between the two; they ride a wave of vibrancy and transcendence at opposite ends of a spectrum. White’s hand spun PLA “paintings” are as stringent as the more machine reliant works by Bruno. The intervention of the hand is a great point of contrast in the execution of the works—which brings me back to Sol Lewitt’s idea of the hand in his Wall Drawings, as they are executed by others.