OTTO GOLD (2004)

One of his Superstar Shadow wall-text paintings, OTTO GOLD explores Kennedy's interest in the interplay of names between people and paint colours.

Arising from an earlier installation at the Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany, the year prior, OTTO GOLD was exhibited in 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada for the travelling group exhibition The Ironic Turn. 

"This work grew out of my installation at Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany in 2003 entitled Telephone Book (In Colours): Erfurt and Shawnee. It was part of The Ironic Turn, organized and circulated by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in collaboration with Kunsthalle Erfurt, Faux Mouvement and the Owens Art Gallery. 

In that work I made a telephone book for Erfurt, Germany in the front part followed by one for Shawnee Kansas (the sister city—a wonderful co-incidence that I couldn't resist using) in the back section. The book was similar to most telephone books except it contained only the names of persons who have names of a colour. Lelah Ferguson, curator of the show, and I made paintings of these colours on square canvases the size of which are proportional to the numbers of the colour names as they appear in their respective listings. In developing this work I was intrigued by the fact that Erfurt owed much of its earlier prosperity to the colour blue—more specifically to the blue derived from the cultivation of the woad plant (Isatis tinctoria). It was a plant that, upon certain pressing and fermenting procedures, was transformed into the most sought after blue dye in the Middle Ages. One doesn't have to leap too far to connect the word Shawnee to the colour red that was given to the Native American by the "white man". Also there is evidence that the Shawnee tribe did indeed use the earth-based colour red-oxide in decorating their bodies and homes. The colour Shawnee Red ironically enough also pops up in Detroit as a trim colour for a 1941 Pontiac limousine. 

So with blue and red historically embedded in the work, I had painted one half of the main foyer of the Kunsthalle in Woad Blue and the other in Shawnee Red. All the paintings (39) of people of colours' names from Erfurt are presented on the woad blue side and all the paintings (26) of colour names from Shawnee on the red-oxide side. One of the names in the new Erfurt phone directory was Otto Gold. The word Otto, in another neat coincidence of the work, when drawn in Superstar Shadow, fit beautifully into the very high four-sided entrance foyer of the MOCCA. Having chose OTTO as the text for my piece, I asked Lelah Ferguson to phone Mr. Otto Gold and discuss with him the prospect of having his first name painted in gold in the entrance of the show's presentation in Toronto. The text on the inside of the gold folder that I built for the show is the result of this conversation. Mark Bell, who I had worked with earlier for the painting of two Goodwater installations, installed the work. 

-Garry Neill Kennedy, Superstar Shadow (1984-2005), pg. 102