Between Something and Nothing
Featured in this exhibition at Richard Telles is a multi-generational group of painters who embrace a paradoxically rigorous approach to the casual, loose, and improvisational. Each artist operates at points between (the fictive boundaries of) figuration and abstraction, applying paint with various degrees of density, liquidity, restraint, and bravura. They all have refrained from 鈥渇inishing鈥� their pictures in the conventional sense, aware that to 鈥渇inish鈥� a picture is to kill it. Instead they have drawn from an internalized vocabulary, shaping images instinctively over many iterations and/or layers鈥攂ut ultimately through many paintings. They invite us to project into and off their surfaces and cryptic references, rather than make images for our quick digestion.
Each artist鈥檚 method of execution betrays hints of a contradiction: brushstrokes that appear to be 鈥渃ursory鈥� carries with it the specter of its affectation. Whether each painter is reciting a brushstroke by rote or experimentation, he or she has refined a vision that has gradually morphed over time, even occasionally undermining it to make new discoveries. This exhibition surveys the various ways painters explore structurally open-ended, yet cohesive practices without prescription, alternating between material / pictorial obstinance and generosity.
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Featured in this exhibition at Richard Telles is a multi-generational group of painters who embrace a paradoxically rigorous approach to the casual, loose, and improvisational. Each artist operates at points between (the fictive boundaries of) figuration and abstraction, applying paint with various degrees of density, liquidity, restraint, and bravura. They all have refrained from 鈥渇inishing鈥� their pictures in the conventional sense, aware that to 鈥渇inish鈥� a picture is to kill it. Instead they have drawn from an internalized vocabulary, shaping images instinctively over many iterations and/or layers鈥攂ut ultimately through many paintings. They invite us to project into and off their surfaces and cryptic references, rather than make images for our quick digestion.
Each artist鈥檚 method of execution betrays hints of a contradiction: brushstrokes that appear to be 鈥渃ursory鈥� carries with it the specter of its affectation. Whether each painter is reciting a brushstroke by rote or experimentation, he or she has refined a vision that has gradually morphed over time, even occasionally undermining it to make new discoveries. This exhibition surveys the various ways painters explore structurally open-ended, yet cohesive practices without prescription, alternating between material / pictorial obstinance and generosity.
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