Margaret Honda

Made by exposing a standard roll of print stock to colored light in a contact printer, this film begins with a uniform field of black, then gradually moves through progressively lighter fields of gray until it reaches white, then reverses toward black.

Made by exposing a standard roll of print stock to colored light in a contact printer, this film begins with a uniform field of black, then gradually moves through progressively lighter fields of gray until it reaches white, then reverses toward black.

6144 x 1024 is a digital projection generated by a program that creates each frame in real time. The succession of frames, each a single color, defines the surface of the color space used by the projector. Working with 6,144 color steps and 1,024 lightness steps, the maximum quantities for this projector’s color space, the program generates over three million frames, every one a unique color. Shown at 24 frames per second, this version of the work runs 36 hours 22 minutes 2 seconds.

Artist Margaret Honda’s first feature-length film, Color Correction is a commitment to celluloid cinema and a brilliantly conceived experience of projected light. The film was made using only the timing tapes that corrected the color for a Hollywood feature, the identity of which Honda does not know. Devoid of images and deeply meditative, Color Correction offers a timely insistence on the indispensable nature of this great medium.

Wildflowers is shot in 16mm on two fifty-foot Kodachrome magazines. Since Kodachrome color processing ended in 2010 it is only possible to develop it as black-and-white negative, rather than color positive. I set up ten-second shots of different wildflowers that bloom every year in Southern California. Like the Kodachrome itself, the flowers would be drained of the color that is their primary attribute. The negative stock, fifty years past its expiration date and suffering from base degradation, was returned from the lab with no discernible image on either roll. A description of each flower’s color and structure is read by a narrator at the moment when it would have appeared on-screen. The film is a record of something that is disappearing on something that has already disappeared.

Margaret Honda's awesome Spectrum Reverse Spectrum is a silent, camera-less colour-field film created and exhibited on 70mm. A maximalist expression of minimalism reminiscent of James Turrell's light sculptures, Honda's immersive, epically scaled work is both abstract and strangely affecting, especially as a collective viewing experience.