"Form Less Painting" Exhibition

Andrew Roth

poster for "Form Less Painting" Exhibition

This event has ended.

A painting is a meeting point between centuries of art history and contemporary culture. The categories developed to think about painting are so vast that for it to be a unique work of art it has to negotiate a point in this network of histories and meanings. Painting has to carry the weight of history on its shoulders. For an artist in the Twenty-first Century, turning to painting as an art form is as political an act as making immaterial art is.

A short while ago when I was putting out the garbage I found a discarded painting. It was square, approximately 40 x 40 cm, and was cracked and folded in half. Unfolded, it was vivid red and black, painted with rough brush-strokes, in high-contrast. It depicted a scene of betrayal between a couple and another woman. On the backside, written in clear black capital letters, it read: DARING TO MAKE MISTAKES. As a discarded memento this painting took on greater meaning than it was intended to have.

Is it possible to separate the physical painting from the idea of painting --outside a canon? While many artists in the past fifty years have altered the notion of art – its materiality and appearance – can the opposite happen? Can painting be thought of as an experimental platform not inscribed within tradition?

In 2009, I read a strange document. As a contribution to her exhibition ‘Chance Encounters’ Karin Schneider asked the curator to write a highly personal press release. This request, this gesture, profoundly influenced my working method; it’s a clear example of the deconstruction of an existing form of language, replaced by a more open form, laying bare the core of the relationship between the old and new. For her current exhibition at Roth, Karin asked me to invent a new way of selling a work. This press release is part of the politics of (dis)placement, where I, Karin and We may (re)consider painting.

Heidi Ballet, Brussels 2011.

Media

Schedule

from September 09, 2011 to October 07, 2011

Opening Reception on 2011-09-08 from 18:00 to 20:00

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