Overview
As the title Carnivalesca suggests, this exhibition widens the scope to take a fresh look at painting, and to open up a discussion on a number of aspects commonly associated with the sphere of painting and the actions of the subjects we call “painters”. It aims to broaden views on painting to point out central, highly influential international artists and developments in the medium from the postwar period up to the present day; to highlight important advancements across generations of artists that have stretched the boundaries of what painting can be, beyond its mere frame and canvas ground, pushing it into its social and political engagements; and to show the scene of contemporary international painting in the full light of its variety of artistic approaches, its diversity of discursive engagement with the medium,
On a first basic level, this means to challenge the artistic legacy of what has been, in the past, canonized as early Modernist painting – works by artists who were predominantly, if not to say almost exclusively, white men from North America and Western Europe. Today we acknowledge that such a view of painting has been significantly decentered by art from many women and men of all cultures, and in all parts of the world. Their actions sum up to not one, but many art histories that have challenged for quite a while hegemonic ideas of art and its production. Artists from many different countries, cultures and traditions today show their work internationally. That old perception central to the Western art world, fetishized by a certain academic discourse, has no place in any valid narrative of what painting was and is.
Secondly, many artists working in painting nowadays concern themselves with real social and political issues – the kind that anyone could relate to. The human body, its sensations and all kinds of our fears attached to it are once again at the center of attention of many artists and much painting made today, challenging, from this vantage point, dominant principles of abstraction and aesthetic autonomy that perhaps are as strong today as they were in the days of high modernism. Contemporary art echoes the problems we face in our daily lives: how to act, how to think, what to believe. Contra to Greenberg, art is social for both artists and viewers, and the particular medium of painting is a critical form that can function as a means for socio-political commentary.
