John Mroch reviews Robert Swain: Form of Color at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, on view through August 23, 2014.

Mroch writes: "Lining the walls of the main gallery of the Santa Monica Museum of Art are five paintings — the smallest two being nine-by-nine foot squares, and the largest a rectangle sizing up to ten feet tall and 70 feet long. Each of these giant panels is divvied into a grid pattern consisting of twelve inch by twelve inch squares — each assigned a single hue different than the rest. With this network, Swain blends colors across the gallery, demanding viewers to come face to face with various color hues, saturations and combinations they have never experienced before… Since 1970, Robert Swain has been developing his own 'language' of color – hand mixing paints to create a system that now consists of nearly 4,900 different shades."