• CURATOR'S NOTES

  • It was something of a surprise to see the subject of the Summer 2011 edition of Artforum. Annually devoted to a single idea or topic, that year it was “Acting Out: The Ab Ex Effect” and focused mainly around contemporary approaches to Abstract Expressionist painting. It suggested that as perennially unfashionable as it is to acknowledge undeniable art historical influences like Abstract Expressionism, perhaps now this silliness is behind us. Perhaps now we can again approach ideas and ways of making art that continue to engage us and pose challenges.

  • “New Formalisms 2” proposes a re-engagement with the formal aspects of painting. If certain artists are pursuing paths laid by Abstract Expressionism it would logically follow that there is much left to explore in the formal aspects of artmaking. Interestingly then, rather than a single moment or approach, the artists included in this exhibition seem to collapse the successive movements of High Modernism into their works, combining these into something distinctly different while moving in new directions. Steven Husby gives the gesturalism of Abstract Expressionism a knowing nod while it is simultaneously played against tight control. Samantha Bittman, who weaves her own canvases, gives new potential to the relation of stretcher and ground to paint application. Todd Chilton’s studied color interactions and vibrations work against their insistent flatness. The possibility of representation in abstraction is hinted at in Melissa Oresky’s gem-like collages that remain nonetheless neutral. The works include all of these references, yet are not singularly reducible to them and indeed move beyond them.

  • To say it another way, good ideas don’t die and modes of making don’t empty out. They grow, mutate and live on yielding new ideas and new directions, only limited by creativity. Here it is appropriate to end similarly to the beginning, with a quote from the Summer edition of Artforum, this time from 2010, that is directly applicable to the aims of this exhibition. Helen Molesworth, the Chief Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, states, “The goals . . . still revolve around historical narrativization—because, I think, this is one way in which you can actually work against . . . ‘the new for new’s sake.’ . . . You can say, ‘Hey, there is a different version of the story we assume to be true. This story has a history. These ideas lead to other ideas.’”

  • ABRAHAM RITCHIE