Oil Soaked Flannel by Paul Barsch

OJ Presents ‘Oil Soaked Flannel’ – a solo show by Paul Barsch

We have a chair. A director’s chair. 
A lightweight chair that folds side-to-side with a scissors action. 
The chair for film-making. Blue screen effects. Medial constructions of reality.
We have a blue pigment. Ultramarine. Lapis lazuli. 
Yves Klein used it to create his International Klein Blue monochrome paintings. 
They make a perfect blue screen.
We have flannel shirts. Workers clothing. Heavy Cotton.
You use old shirts to wipe off the oil. Oil and industrial labor. Brown oil covers oceans.
The craving for color requires a workforce to scrape out the mines. (Or to run laboratories …)
A need for distraction craves for colorful creation. (A vicious circle …)
Then we have the myth of the 3 chairs used by Walt Disney to foster his creativity. 
The Dreamer-chair, the Critic-chair, and the Realist-chair. (For (self-)optimization …)
We have screens. To display the drama.
BLUE versus BLUE. 
A director’s chair’s seat and back are made of canvas.
The director sits, while others run.
The canvas works fine for painting too. 
So, what we have are vague connections. Close and loose relations of pigment and power structures, precarious labor, entertainment, and medial construction techniques. 
It is BLUE, the key color for fantasies of recreational bliss. 
The Blue Lagoon. The BLUE sky. A BLUE moon. 
The blue screen of death. 
There is always someone who connects the cables and ensures that everything is recorded. 
(And gets it screened back to you …)