FOREVER NOW: CONTEMPORARY PAINTING IN AN ATEMPORAL WORLD - Museum of Modern Art 1/23/15

Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1498

I went to see FOREVER NOW….. exhibition at MOMA - another one of those painting shows at Museum of Modern Art - (though it has been awhile since they focused on a survey of painting) that predicts the “future” of the medium…this time conflated with the digital age’s ease of finding sources on the internet - illustrations of artists’ works over the ages appear in a heartbeat - just go to Google or Bing Images and they come up with a click of a mouse - everything is equal - there is no historical timeline  - we just look, like and use what we need; we resample, appropriated images with abandon. That is the premise of this  examination of 17 artists in the show. I am not sure why these particular artists were selected…because so many painters have been working in a similar manner for years, but these are their “picks” .

Julie Mehretu, Oscar Murillo Amy Sillman and  Charline von Heyl - are the stars of the show! Why? Because they are aware of history and re contextualize works from the past with the intelligence and honesty that makes for a dialogue that is not just chewed and spit out - rather it is digested and becomes part of their own internal system. Mehretu’s new work deals with the overlapping space and mark-making that she has always used - but now feel like beautifully floating Chinese landscapes. 

I had heard a lot about Oscar Murillo - hot hot hot….and when I saw his paintings I knew from the sureness of his hand that he could paint. Despite the illusion of an artist with a  slap-dash attitude - this man knows what he is doing. He can dump paintings on the floor as if they were materials thrown away in a garage sale - discarded as if they were worthless and forgotten, but that belies a hand and eye that is “schooled” in looking and skilled to boot.

Charline von Heyl - references pop and comic art. The work is clear and has a presence that made me turn around to look at the paintings over and over from across the room; spinning around to “see” again the freshness and seeming simplicity and “lightweighted-ness” of what I felt were strongly structured abstractions that had an individuality missing from some of the other artists in the exhibition where pretension and the swagger of youth - a punk rock attitude prevails.

Any Sillman bringing up the ghosts of Philip Guston - a worthwhile apparition. Something about her quirkiness; forms butting up against each other conjured up the man with the cigars and shoes - brought back to life with delicacy dealing with the everyday-ness that we see around us.

Nicole Eisenman is a phenomena - an accomplished eccentric. These figurative  heads reference German Expressionist painters particularly Alexi Jawlensky - Literally a face "in your face" with tiny bits of personal/political information attached unto the painting including 2 American Silver Dollars  substituted for eyes in one work.  

By the way Institution don’t seem to want to use the label ACRYLIC anymore so “synthetic polymer” is the term and is the popular medium of choice for many of the artists. 

ihttp://artistmarketingresources.com/2012/06/18/artists-switch-from-labeling-their-paintings-acrylic-to-synthetic-polymer/

I found the same spirit of  wordplay and arrogance  in some other works in the show - a remix sensibility - the recklessness and feeling of unrestrained confidence evidenced by "I don’t need to look at anything beyond my own hermetic world because the free spirit reigns supreme”.