“In his sculptures, videos, and works on paper, Stephen Dean approaches color theory from a scientist’s perspective. Using the tools of the laboratory—including colorful NASA-designed dichroic glass, weather maps, and thermal-imaging cameras—Dean creates works that celebrate the relationship between saturated color, transparency, and light. “The way I make these pieces, it’s like a form of painting,” Dean has said of sculptures like Prayer Mill (2007), which features colorful panels of high-tech dichroic glass arranged on a postcard stand. “It’s not in the idea of turning painting into a three-dimensional space, but about the looking.” In such pieces, ambient natural light plays as important of a role as his physical materials, changing the colors of the sculpture throughout the day.”