Paintings by John M Armleder, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, Joe Bradley, Bernard Buffet, Brian Calvin, John Currin, Daan van Golden, Charline von Heyl, David Hockney, Alex Israel, Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Bertrand Lavier, Erik Lindman, John McAllister, David Ostrowski, Richard Phillips, Bridget Riley, Christian Rosa, Julian Schnabel, Alain Séchas, Josh Smith, Betty Tompkins, Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille, Jonas Wood, Christopher Wool.
Sculpture by Katharina Fritsch.
Inspired by Peter Schjeldahl’s quote that “Modern art history has ceased to represent a road traveled, and has come to seem an encircling panorama,” this exhibition gathers paintings (landscapes, portraits, shapes) by nearly twenty international artists from different generations, from Bridget Riley to Christian Rosa. Their artistic commitment harks back to some various eras when choosing a discipline –visual arts – didn’t carry the same promises or contingencies.
If Peter Schjeldahl drew this observation in the first article he published in The Village Voice on January 7, 1981, describing what seemed to him a new situation for art (a postmodernist use of history and the consequences of an economy that multiplies some fortunes), today it takes on an even more radical signification. The complex initiation journey that used to lead to a knowledge of art as well as the path made out of the ruptures traced by the avant-gardes seem to have given the way to a 360º panorama that offers an immediate and simultaneous access to the near totality of art production and its history. To the new generations, art from the last few decades may present itself as a tumblr, a panoramic view with uninhibited entertainment virtues.[…]