Gallery Review #1: “28”

Painting in the 21st century faces the challenge of occurring after an entire generation of artists abandoned it almost entirely, only to return to the medium in the 1980s, which in turn raised questions concerning the authenticity of painting in the postmodern era. Theorist Benjamin Buchloh declared painting in the late 20th century as an obsolete mode of production which did not “disappear but rather drift in history as [an] empty vessel waiting to be filled with reactionary interests in need of cultural legitimation” (Figures of Authority: Ciphers of Regression 55). In other words, due to mechanical reproduction and the imminent reproducibility of any image or sequence of images, what purpose does painting serve other than to communicate a socio-political agenda? “28”, a student art exhibition for second-year MFA students at the Claremont Graduate University, manages to display an engaging series of paintings that encourage reconciliation of the medium with the technological offerings of the digital age.
Because of the scale of this exhibition (as the title suggests, there work of 28 graduate students was on display), I will focus on three artists in particular who offer different approaches to the re-contextualization of painting in the age of digital reproduction. The first piece which will be considered is Kevin Scianni’s “Lost Clusters”, seen below:

















This acrylic on canvas painting engages the viewer with its emphasis on bold lines, and the flamboyant analogous color scheme certainly catches the eye. However, this piece also engages the debate concerning painting’s place in the digital age through the seemingly random arrangement of lines and negative space. The jagged lines in the right portion of the frame allude to digital representation of form. For instance, if one were to look closely at their computer monitor and examine the text in this review, they would find the exact same sort of lines in each letter of each word. In fact, this sort of line exists in every piece of technology which characterizes our time: Ipods, TVs, computers, digital advertising, etc. In this way, Scianni presents a form native to the late 20th and early 21st century, but blown up and placed into a context in which the viewer must examine it anew. The medium of painting exists as an important factor in this engagement, for this is what forces the viewer to see this type of line in a new way. Therefore content and form function together in this piece in order to re-contextualize a distinctly post-modern object – the jagged digital line.

The second artist which engages the prospect of painting in the 21st century is Azadeh Tajpour, an Iranian-American woman whose piece reproduces instances of her facebook homepage which contain correspondence concerning the June 2009 election fallout and violence:


(detail)


















These frames, printed digitally, appear to have been applied with broad brushstrokes, giving the piece a gritty spontaneous feel. However, the meaning of these pages juxtaposed against each other becomes obfuscated due to the fact that these sporadic brushstrokes effectively hide the content of each page. For instance, a close examination of one of these frames reveals that Tajpour is facebook friends with Mr. Mousavi, the reformist candidate who challenged the results of the election, but it is impossible to see exactly what he said on that day. Clearly, Tajpour wants to comment on the fact that communication during this strenuous event was almost entirely digital (even major news networks were about an hour behind network sites like Twitter), but she also seems to be focused on a lack, or negative space, in the communication. This could refer to the thousands of people who were being arrested and silenced during this period, but it suspiciously looks as if the brushstrokes merely exist to differentiate between the easily reproducible facebook pages and her art. In this way, the brush strokes enact Buchloh’s statement from earlier – they conveniently reference the medium of painting simply because it is so recognizable.

The final artist considered in this review is Allison Allford, whose paintings utilize a unique method of engaging the possibilities of painting as a medium:
















At no point in Allford’s process does a brush come into play: these compositions are achieved by carefully pouring the different colors on the canvas, so that they interact with each other organically. Allford, who was available for interview, stated that she was inspired by satellite photographs of landscapes from space, and these paintings clearly show an interest in the relationship between large-scale environments and the physicality of the medium of painting, which can create forms even with minimal and careful intervention from the artist. Also, because of the Allford's initial inspiration came from satellite photos, this piece confronts issues of digital and distinctly modern representation of Earth (the satellite photo) utilizing the painting medium.

Therefore, painting still has a place in the 21st century due to its ability to examine the possibilities and tenants of the digital age in a that distinctly modern forms of expression, such as photography, cannot.