Current Trends in Modern Painting

CENTER FOR THE ARTS, EAGLE ROCK IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE

CURRENT TRENDS IN MODERN PAINTING

January 15 - February 6, 2010

Opening Reception Friday January 15, 2010   7 pm – 10 pm

Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock is pleased to announce Current Trends in Modern Painting, a group exhibition including work in a variety of mediums by Los Angeles artists, Robert Becraft, Julia Dzwonkoski and Kye Potter, Mark Hagen, Nathan Hylden, Brian Kennon, Becca Mann, Carter Mull, Alex Olson, Guan Rong, Mateo Tannat, Miller Updegraff, Kaari Upson, and Lisa Williamson, curated by Sayre Gomez. The Opening reception will be held on Friday January 15^th from 7-10 pm, and will continue through February 6, 2010.

I believe my exhibitions depended and still depend on memories of a period when I assumed the creative situation in a heroic and solitary manner. In other words, it used to be: read this, look at this.  Today it is: allow me to present . . .

-Marcel Broodthaers

…And now, when the economy is cutting its ties with concrete geography, culture for its part is divorcing from history; two parallel processes tending towards the abstract.

-Nicholas Bourriaud

The exhibition includes artists’ whose work is executed in a variety of mediums; all of which have a relationship to, or address notions of what it means to make paintings, how and why. Painting is a “model,” and as a model, painting presents questions, problem, possibilities, and opportunities that are also applicable beyond its own boundaries.  

A painting generates a thought that might be reconsidered and reframed in another work that is not a painting at all; in an attempt to continually widen and re-invent the circle of what the artists’ practice may encompass.  Paintings’ relationship to other mediums, as well as popular media and imagery, compound this problem, making it social.  Where does art fit, what can it do? How can art-making itself become both the medium as well as the support?  How does painting operate as a primary source of experimentation and understanding? Its’ role in pedagogy is also an important aspect to consider when evaluating its significance within the broad scope of contemporary art production.  Included in the exhibition will be drawing, installation, painting, photography, and video.

-Sayre Gomez, 2009