acrylic, yarn, pickup sticks, fake eyelashes, plastic grommet, plastic lid on canvas panel, 8×10 inches
Contributed by Sharon Butler / After a lengthy stretch during which emerging painters have leaned into commercial preferences for the traditional, many seem to be breaking free from the market’s emphasis on imagery and narrative. Painters with a penchant for experimental, near three-dimensional approaches have bounced back into the conversation they commanded in the early 2010s. Three current exhibitions, all curated by artists, reflect various aspects of this phenomenon.
Among the three, “Painting Deconstructed,” curated by Leeza Meksin at Ortega y Gasset Projects, most clearly and directly demonstrates painting’s expansiveness. Meksin has produced a contemporary primer, gathering an impressive array of artists. Some are well-known practitioners like Dona Nelson and Gina Beavers, but most are from a younger generation who have adopted idiosyncratic strategies like turning canvas into clothing, incorporating unusual items, and painting on found objects. Standouts include Hannah Beerman, Susan Carr, Kari Cholnoky (also in the show at Springs Projects) Cate Holt, Scott Vander Veen, and Rachel Eulena Williams. The show takes its place in what I hope could be a burgeoning revival of iconoclastic painting.
“Material World,” curated by Gina Beavers at Marianne Boesky Gallery, includes the work of familiar artists who have customarily used or depicted everyday – often found – objects and materials in their work, alongside younger ones who exploit digital, AI, and other new technical processes. Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Murray, Jessica Stockholder, El Anatsui, Jack Whitten, and Mike Kelley all have pieces in the show. It also presents work from well known but less iconic artists such as Darren Bader, LaKela Brown, Samara Golden, Jared Madere, Jonathan Sánchez Noa, and Andrew Roberts.
In “Bluets and Blue” at Springs Projects, curator Cate Holt – who herself has a wonderful piece in “Painting Deconstructed” – doesn’t focus specifically on hybrid genres, but her selection points decisively in that direction. Especially forward-leaning artists include Valerie Haggarty, Lindsey Packer, Kari Cholnoky, and Emily Weiskopf.
These 2024 shows notably hark back to a couple of 2013 exhibitions worth remembering. “Donut Muffin,” an energetic show at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects that Tamara Gonzales and Jessica Duffett put together, featured hybrid work combining painting and sculpture in novel ways. PAINT THINGS: beyond the stretcher,” organized by Dina Deitsch and Evan Garza at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, showcased artists disposed to merge painting, sculptural form, video, performance, and installation. Over time, painters evolve, swerve, and occasionally take flight, but they rarely suffer from amnesia.
“Bluets and Blue,” Springs Projects, 20 Jay Street, Third Floor, Brooklyn, NY. Through July 22, 2024.“Material World,” Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street, New York, NY. Through July 26, 2024.
“Painting Deconstricted,” Ortega y Gasset Projects, 363 3rdAvenue, Brooklyn, NY. Through August 18, 2024.
Keep in mind:
“Wendy White: Heart Beats Dust,” GAA, 4 Cortlandt Alley, 368 Broadway, New York, NY . Through July 3, 2024.
“Jeremy DePrez: Reality’s Coffin,” Post Times, 29 Henry Street, New York, NY. Through August 3, 2024
“Facture Fracture: Sam Branden, Kadar Brock, Shayna Miller, Jack Arthur Wood,” Chart, 74 Franklin Street, New York, NY. Through August 23, 2024
About the author: Sharon Butler is a painter and the publisher of Two Coats of Paint. Her solo show “Buildingdrawing” is on view at Furnace Art on Paper Archive through July 6, 2024.
I liked Sharon Butler’s ambitious intention to coax the halcyon days when art was art, artists were outspoken heroic and sheep were nervous. The theory of art acquired in the contemporary sense, a peculiar trope sermonizing, bviortue messaging and moralising which made the curators, artists, wrigters the delibery boys & girls messengers of joujrnalists, publicists, activists and lobbyinsts, superficial sockiology psychology all that came with the repudiation of the dialectics of art.
This article with the images gave me a feel for iconoclastic works of various kinds, incorporating found objects, counter-intuitive fabrics and materials, and de-contextualized material substances, and mixed-media installations. I am prompted to inquire about habits of viewing, and whether representation and narrative are not actually native to the visual medium (despite conventional tastes).