Painter Painter

Featuring recent works by some 15 artists from the United States and Europe, Painter Painter maps an emergent sensibility shared among them—namely, an interest in new languages of abstraction and eccentric modes of production, coupled with a renewed awareness of the studio as a site of individual creativity. This apparent turn inward—toward the space of the studio, the materials at hand, and painting’s minor histories—marks a distinct shift away from the medium’s expanded field of the past two decades. Favoring relational nuances of making over high concepts, these artists pursue untested possibilities for painting by sidestepping its past ideological debates and linear narratives. For them, its materiality and overloaded contexts function as sites of creative activity. This commitment has revealed a multitude of positions, roles, and guises for today’s painter to assume as the status of the art form shifts in contemporary culture.