In his paintings, Colen questions the very meaning and power of making marks on a canvas. The Candle Paintings (begun in 2003) are highly detailed oil paintings of a still from the Disney movie Pinocchio. As Colen progressed in the series, painting several iterations of the same animated frame, the image became successively less coalescent, the rendering more individuated and further from the idea of the perfectly blended oil painting. In the Confetti Paintings (from 2010), discrete marks hold their own space on the canvas, emphasizing their self-contained energy. Papier–mâché boulders (from 2006) that use trompe l'oeil techniques in oil paint to mimic heavy sculptural stone; a series of natural stones painted to look like M&M candies (from 2012); and the deceptive Birdshit Paintings (from 2006) underscore the nature of Colen’s experiments in aesthetics and representation.
The deconstruction of an artwork’s creation, and the investigation of the meaning imbued in its raw material, has also led Colen to use unconventional materials. This gradual process—the breaking down of the brushstroke and the very elements of the artist’s mark—was extended with the visceral, abstract Bubblegum Paintings (from 2006). Made of actual bubblegum instead of paint, these works corresponded in some ways to the questions of painting and historical representation that Colen himself seems to ask with oil painting. Grappling with materials over long stretches of time, within each series, he challenges their distinct formal qualities again and again. Chosen for their immediacy and their remoteness from contemporary art discourse, each substance—from chewing gum to street trash—overrides assumptions about the essence of painting. Brash yet fragile, the Flower Paintings contain Colen’s accumulated impressions from the last six years, not unlike the traditional Daoist landscape painter who must wander through the mountains in order to depict his topography. This series is the culmination of a pivotal phase in Colen’s career as a groundbreaking American painter.
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