Expanded field of painting

Desde hace algunos años observamos cómo la práctica pictórica contemporánea ha planteado transformaciones que cuestionan y amplían las convenciones en las que se ha sustentado tradicionalmente la categoría de pintura. Títulos de exposiciones recientes como Urgent painting (París, 2002), Painting Pictures (Wolfsburg, Alemania, 2003), Pintar sin pintura (Salamanca, 2002), Pintar sense pintar (Lleida 2005), Sky shout la pintura después de la pintura (Santiago de Compostela, 2005), Pintura mutante (Vigo, 2007), Antes de ayer y pasado mañana, lo que puede ser la pintura hoy (A Coruña, 2009), confirman que algo ha cambiado y está cambiando en la forma de ver, entender y pintar la pintura.

This paper takes an overview of painting’s morphology by way of Heidegger’s discussion of the Greek term phusis, a self unfolding emergence, that drives all matter, ranging from the earth itself through to the material element of the artwork in the moment of its making. By focusing on phusis, and related terms morphe and poesis,  an understanding of ‘original aesthetics’ (Greek thinking on painting and sculpture) can be developed for comparison with contemporary art in its ‘post-medium condition’ (Krauss).

The new ontological paradigm of contemporary art evokes another discourse, a ‘post aesthetics’ that overcomes the subjective bias of modern philosophical aesthetics in favour of a primary relationship to things and their mode of presence in the world. As a result, contemporary expanded painting is shown to be a radical revision of art , a moment of ontological ‘presencing’ favouring spatial environments and temporal events that reveal ‘what is’ and ‘what matters’ in a contemporary techno-scientific age.

The degree titled Escape from Alkatraz (Pobeg iz Alkatraza) is divided into two parts. First, the chapters relating to the practical part, a description of art projects (art pieces) shown on a degree exhibition named Escape from Alkatraz; the second is a dissertation which applies on the subject of the degree. Emphasis of the main subject is collected in subtitles of the second part: Rog Factory (Rog), The Canon of the White Cube (Kanon bele kocke), The Chamber of Aesthetics (Hram estetike), Site-, Are We Living In the White Cube? (Ali živimo v beli kocki?), Tabula Rasa, A Room Or Modernism Derivative? (Soba ali derivat modernizma?), Mimicry (Mimikrija), Parasites (Paraziti), A Model of the White Cube (Model bele kocke), Western Triumph? (Zahodni triumf?), Panopticon (Panoptikon), The Walls of Alcatraz (Zidovi Alkatraza), Nomads (Nomadi), Baumax, Placed inside the Walls (Postavljeni znotraj zidov), Prisoners (Zaporniki), Exhibition – Mandatory Station (Razstava – obvezna postaja), Stations of Music (Postaje glasbe), Audience – Spectators – Listeners – Visitors – Participants (Publika – Gledalci – Poslušalci – Obiskovalci – Udeleženci), Impro, Diving (Potapljanje), The Eye and the Body (Oko in Telo), Subjectively – Collectively – Objectively (Subjektivno – Kolektivno – Objektivno), Décor or Transforming the Function of the Place (Dekor ali spreminjanje funkcije prostora), Medium – End (Medij – Cilj), On the Line (Na liniji), Merzbau, Justifies the Means (Opravičuje sredstva), The Walls of Painting (Zidovi slike), The Struggle for Painting (Boj za sliko), The Space of Painting (Prostor slike), Expanded Media (Razširjeni mediji), Paintings on the Exhibition (Slike na razstavi), Autonomy? (Avtonomija?). I’ve collaged my text with fragments of conversations I made with my co-workers of the projects described in degree. Together they create dialogue or polilogue which is branched and open-ended. Escape from Alcatraz represents one of the possible approaches towards this subject matter. In the core of the text there are several conclusions, thus the degree Escape from Alcatraz doesn’t have the formal ending.

I am attaching here information of the International Painting Prize of the City of Castellón, Spain for which I was artistic director for the editions 2005, 2006 and 2007.

This prize of 60.000 euros was dedicated to the concept of "expanded painting" which I consistently promoted by making use of international e-flux announcements.

Here are the announcements and you can see that in each announcement the concept 'expanded painting' is mentioned and an explanation of it is given in order to facilitate the scope and participation of the artists.

In this chapter I explain the concept of 'expanded painting', where it comes from, how it  it was able to renovate itself through its relation to other media, the concept of 'techno-referentiality,' and how it prefigured a new consciensce or mood in painting especially since 2000, and also its historical genesis in the 20th century.

I also address the Castellón International Painting Prize of which I was artistic director and which between 2005 and 2008 was devoted to the topic of expanded painting. Through this international contest with a unique 60.000 euros Prize I promoted the contest and the concept 'expanded painting' internationally in a consistent manner.

I also CURATED various EXHIBITIONS on the topic:

1) "The Expanded Painting Show", MASH, Miami, USA (co-curated with Nina Arias) in December 2007; ·

2) "Expanded Painting" at Space Other Gallery, Boston, USA, March 2008;

3) "Painting and Other Stories..." at Arte Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal, curated section Project Rooms, November 2008;"

4) "Cuando una pintura se mueve... ¡algo debe estar podrido!" (When a Paitning Moves Something Must be Rotten) at Centro Colombo-Americano, Bogota, Colombia, June 2009

5) "When a Painting Moves...Something Must be Rotten" at Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR), San Juan, Puerto Rico, Novemeber 2009

6) "Video Killed the Painting Star" at Domus Artium (DA2), Salamanca, Spain (co-curated with Javier Panera), April 2010; 

7) "When a Painting Moves...Something Must be Rotten!, Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway, January 2011;

This is the essay of a show I curated at the Art Fair ARTE LISBOA from 19 to 24 November 2008 in Lisbon, Portugal with artists from the exhiting galleries in the curated project section of the fair on the idea of 'expanded painting,' that I had been promoting since 2005.

El video, la fotografía y el cine han tenido un papel clave en la identificación de los desafíos y perspectivas de la historia del arte del siglo XXI, y en lo relacionado a cómo cuestionar, reformular críticamente y superar nociones y modelos modernistas de la especificidad de los medios. También han ayudado a enriquecer los enfoques inter y transdisciplinarios en la historia contemporánea del arte, y su comprensión del arte producido en diferentes medios, antes y durante la modernidad. El VIII Simposio de Historia del Arte en la Universidad de los Andes invita a enviar propuestas de trabajos individuales que discutan y examinen algunos de los desafíos metodológicos, analíticos o teóricos, y algunas de las perspectivas de la historia del arte en lo concerniente a la relación entre arte y medios en obras de arte (en un sentido amplio del término) producidas en cualquier momento y lugar. Las ponencias pueden adoptar las aproximaciones descritas a continuación, pero también pueden proponer otras diferentes...

This publication accompanies a two-person (Sin Park and Allyson Keehan) painting exhibition in The Art Space, Glasgow 2019. The exhibition brings together each artist’s individual research into painting and possibilities of re-articulating the surface. The space created by the work, whether real or imaginary, bears witness to the artistic process and research dialogue.
Catalogue essay by Prof. Alistair Payne

BERLIN OPEN STUDIO, PS and sequential art (mixed media on machine laid paper, 100 sheets, each 0,56 x 0,42 m), 2012-13, “Berlin is the Last. The rest is prehistory. If history takes place, Berlin will be the Beginning.“ Heiner Müller, interview in dry (1983). In Berlin open studio, (2012–13) everyday urban experiences are linked with memories, impressionistic images, and the Abstract Expressionist and Surrealist tradition, as well as with graphics, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and cinema, to form a summarizing pictorial ensemble: “The future of the graphic novels lies in the choice of worthwhile themes and the innovation of exposition”, Comics & Sequential Art, Will Eisner (1985). The album deals with basic topics: How do we compose, narrate, and remember in images? What is the relationship between music, drawing, picture and moving image or human and tool? How are recurring visual patterns traced from pre–literary and early history to contemporary analog and digital culture? What is the associated change in the spatial image? The results of the work stands in the intellectual-historical tradition of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, a series of images investigating the function of predefined antique expressive values in the depiction of eventful life in the art of the European Renaissance (1924–29).

Shepley was one of four artists selected from an international call to produce a solo project for the 2014 POWER SHOW at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Art. The exhibition comprised an improvised, multi-media site made by grouping together seven elements formed from various media and materials. Found and made objects, broken models and fractured forms, photographs, video and sound immersed the viewer in a place of making and unmaking – a form of heterotopia - to speculate on the notion of a work’s becoming and create new narratives of possibility. His new film ‘I am from Leonia’ influenced by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities (particularly the cities of Leonia and Sophronia) was a new video piece made especially for this show at KDMOFA. In the video which is played on a continuous loop, the viewer witnesses a figure steadily and purposively sweeping his way around what appears to be an abandoned and ruined building and attempting to fulfil the seemingly impossible blueprint referred to by the inhabitants of Invisible Cities. (http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/17217/)