Pigment Co. Projects

To be a painter in New York City today is to constantly negotiate for the physical room to test and make a mess. As the city becomes increasingly expensive and corporatized, the stubbornly unpolished spaces where art actually happens are quietly disappearing from neighborhoods. But looking back at 19th-century Paris, you’ll see that the modern art gallery wasn't born in pristine, white-walled institutions. It was born in the shops of the marchands de couleurs (color merchants)— the colormen. Pigment dealers like Julien "Père" Tanguy didn't just grind pigments and sell walnut oil; they brought in canvases from young artists like Cézanne and Van Gogh and hung them right there in the shop. It made perfect sense. The raw, complex chemistry of the materials and the finished artwork, carrying its own emotional weight, belong in the same room.

With that same spirit, we are proud to announce Pigment Co. Projects, a dedicated exhibition and research space within the New York Pigment Co. shop.

As we indulge our curiosity about materials and consider what this project space represents, we ask the synesthetic question: How does this color feel?

In grade school, we are taught that color is just an optical illusion made of weightless light waves bouncing into our eyes. But anyone who has ever made paint from pigments knows that there’s more to it than that. Color isn't just a hue in the color wheel; it is physical matter. It is pulverized rock, boiled insects, rusted iron, and synthesized petrochemicals. Color has weight, it has particle size, and most importantly for the painter, it has character.

Painting is rarely a masterfully orchestrated happenstance illusion; it is usually a negotiation with pushing around suspended pigment particles. Art materials aren't just dead, passive matter waiting for us to control them. They are active participants with their own behaviors and distinct psychological and historical weight. For our inaugural exhibition, we are exhibiting paintings that don't just use paint to describe an image, but instead let the material act as the primary subject.

Within my own work, personifying these materials serves as a mnemonic device—a way to map and remember the specific behavioral archetype of each pigment. Minerals like natural Lapis Lazuli, genuine Cinnabar, or coarse earth are inert, stubborn, and profoundly introverted. Because their particle sizes are so large and heavy, they physically refuse to blend in smoothly. In a fluid medium, they sink to the bottom, separate, and stand their ground. The artworks that rely on them are inherently geological; they sag and crumble under their own literal gravity, teaching us about the immovable, grounded nature of earth and rock.

In stark contrast are the bullies. If you’ve ever worked with Phthalocyanine Blue or Green, you know exactly what it means to encounter the tyrants of the palette. With microscopic particle sizes and massive tinting strength, they are relentless, aggressive, and highly extroverted. Add a pin-drop of a bully to a puddle of yellow, and it violently consumes the entire mixture. 

Yet, not all pigments are so commanding; some are beautiful, seductive, or completely untrustworthy. There are also ghosts—the fugitive historical lakes like Madder Lake and Stil de Grain. Notorious for bleeding through the upper layers of paint and quietly fading when exposed to sunlight, the works that highlight these dyes that mimic pigments act as living clocks. They remind us that a color’s hue is rarely a permanent guarantee, but rather a fragile, mortal, and temporary state.

Upstairs in our showroom, the canvases share daylight with rows of pristine jars, contextualized by the raw materials awaiting sale. But the exhibition also descends into the basement—a workshop space devoid of daylight, where the messy, physical labor of aliquoting pigments actually happens. Down there, illuminated by utilitarian workshop lights, the NYC basement forces you to confront every inimitable flaw of the space, highlighting the suspended materials in the paintings, reminding us that whether a red is bound in matte, polished egg tempera, or glossy linseed oil, its psychology is completely tethered to the physical world.

Pigment Co. Projects is an invitation to look closer. We want you to go beyond what a color means and start looking at how it behaves.