Katherine Bernhardt, Hugh Scott Douglas, Jeff Elrod, Daniel Lefcourt, Eddie Peake, Avery Singer, Josh Smith, Brad Troemel

February 7 – June 6, 2015Top Gallery, ASU Art Museum

This exhibition was made possible by generous loans and support from the Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles. Additional support from the Helme Prinzen Endowment.

Special thanks to Nu Nguyen, curator, Ovitz Family Collection and to the entire Ovitz Collection staff for their curatorial and organizational assistance with this exhibition.

Brittany Corrales, Windgate curatorial intern and master’s student in art history, and Elnaz Bokharachi, curatorial intern and master’s student in art history, contributed significant research and thought.

This publication was designed by Araña Schulke, graphic design assistant and undergraduate student in printmaking.

Eddie Peake Sisters, 2012. (detail)Lacquered spray paint on polished stainless steel, 39 3/8 x 55 1/8 x 1 15/16 in. Image courtesy of the artist and White Cube, London; photo by Lewis Peake.

Their works are hybrids of old and new media, processes and stylistic models, from a thickly impastoed painting of palm trees to abstractions derived from street culture and generated by algorithms. They are paintings yet also beyond painting.

Until recently, painting has maintained a superior status in cultural production in part through the force of a centuries-old tradition. Painting’s relevancy has been in question since the discovery of photography in the early 19th century and the ensuing increase in image production technologies. Scrutiny and even dismissal of easel painting continued through the avant-garde movements of the modernist period and peaked in the 1960s and ‘70s when conceptual, video and performance artists opened up the possibilities of what can be understood as art and how and where we experience it. Painting, by comparison, was considered detached and outmoded. It exemplified entrenched traditions and elitist power structures, and continued to produce commodified objects dependent upon galleries and museums, tied to representation and the value of the handmade.

The questioning of its viability and the resulting critical limbo might have been the best thing that could have happened to painting, bringing about new energy and

THE EIGHT ARTISTS INTHIS EXHIBITIONUPEND PRECONCEIVEDHISTORICAL NOTIONS OF WHAT A PAINTINGSHOULD BE.

experimentation. The decision to focus on the discrete painting, on an object hanging on a wall in a space, could now be a compelling challenge and a radical gesture. In 1973, German painter Gerhart Richter said, “One has to believe in what one is doing ... for basically painting is total idiocy.” More recently, Los Angeles painter Laura Owens, a vocal proponent for contemporary painting, asked,

For the most part, painting has reemerged since the ‘90s as central to social, cultural and institutional conversations, but is now more expansive in its processes and models. A key figure in this reevaluation was German artist Martin Kippenberger, with his diffuse, bravura concept of networked painting. Kippenberger believed that rather than focusing on the experience of the two-dimensional object and its materiality, painting should reference and extend to social, spatial and visual networks, solidifying its relevance and impact.

The artists in this exhibition overtly or covertly respond to these shifts in the field and most notably share a conceptual fluidity with materials and technologies, styles and references. They draw freely across artistic production techniques. Avery Singer uses commercial art, architecture and graphic design tools in her figurative, grisaille paintings. These artists mix without apology or fanfare, have no allegiance to the brush, paint or canvas, and are uninterested in the mystification surrounding the handmade or unique object. Josh Smith paints and repaints his palm trees, reflecting mass-produced, kitschy postcards lodged in our minds.

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“DOES ANYONE AT ALL HAVE THIS ABILITY (TO INHABIT THE GESTURE AND MAKE A MARK), OR IS IT AN ANTIQUATED AND SENTIMENTAL IDEA?” ii

This fluidity of image and process reflects the technological and perceptual changes across global society. We move seamlessly between human and digital interfaces, navigate multiple informational systems and blend old and new technologies. Some of the artists in Unfixed use a combination of digital and analog processes to free their mind and hands to be more improvisational. Jeff Elrod creates his compositions on a computer in a process he calls “frictionless drawing.” Others use these techniques and select imagery to address our rich visual environment and how we see, know and communicate now, or to find meaning and patterns amid the mesmerizing and unnerving information flow.

Fueling the discourses around painting is the fact that it has remained, as Owens has said, the universal signifier of Art. Its staying power must be tied to the fertile, speculative space that lies between its basic coordinators of materiality and illusionism, physical objectness and visual representation. The artists in this exhibition use everything at their disposal to build, push against and plumb this duality as they seek a freer space to make paintings, and for us to see them.

Heather Sealy LineberrySenior Curator and Associate Director, ASU Art Museum

i Gerhard Richter, Texts, Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007, Thames and Hudson, London, 2009, p. 70. Also quoted in, Douglas Crimp, “The End of Painting”, October, Vol. 16 (Spring, 1981), p. 73.

ii Laura Owens in interview with Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, “Optical Drive”, Artforum (March, 2013), p. 236.

Brad Troemel’s work is a physical representation of online culture and creativity. In his essay, Athletic Aesthetics, Troemel discusses art’s new mediated environment where artists “trump craft and contemplative brooding with immediacy and rapid production” and provoke the audience to find meaning amid overwhelming flow. He is best known for co-founding a Tumblr site, Jogging, featuring manipulated photographs and memes, and an Etsy site selling hybrid, “inscrutably rare” products, including a padlocked Taco Bell Doritos Locos taco. Troemel’s work in Unfixed is from a series of vacuum-packed pieces where he combines images, objects and food in patterns, such as the 90 theoretical texts arranged in color order, overlain by a t-shirt with color samples, dreadlocks and litecoins, an alternative Internet currency. Whether or not the viewer is able to assign meaning to these combinations, Troemel is clearly exploring the ability of aesthetic forms to move from the digital to the physical, and the meaning and value conferred by the viewing context whether on the Internet, in the marketplace or the museum.

Brad Troemel90 Semiotext(e) books (10 The Administration of Fear, 10 The Femicide Machine, 10 Factories of Knowledge Industries of Creativity, 10 The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, 10 Theory of the Young Girl, 10 The Screwball Asses, 10 The Coming Insurrection, 10 This is Not a Program, 10 Factories of Knowledge Industries of Creativity), Fox Valley Mall T-shirt shop swatch fabric sample, 13 customized human hair dredlocks (4 green dredlocks, 5 blue dredlocks, 4 red dredlocks), 7 Limited edition Lealana 1 Litecoin pieces, 2014. (detail at left)Semiotext(e) books, t-shirt, dredlocks, Litecoins, plastic bag, mounted to cold rolled 16 gauge steel, 74 x 48 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Zach Feuer, New York.

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Katherine Bernhardt titled her recent exhibition of new paintings Stupid, Crazy, Funny, Ridiculous Patterns. Her witty combinations of unassuming objects seem free associated from her adolescence and are a snapshot of a particular time identified by fashion, food and technology. Her work has been compared to pop art for its use of bold color and consumerist icons, and Pattern and Decoration painting for the rough but repeated patterns drawn from real life. Both movements also explored the impact of mechanical reproduction and image consumption on art and life. Bernhardt paints the backgrounds last, roughly pushing on the objects and asserting the painterly with her visible brushstrokes.

Katherine BernhardtSneakers, computers, Capri Sun, 2014.

Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 96 x 120 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

Josh Smith’s main goal is to demystify painting. Smith has been tagged as being at the forefront of a revival in gestural abstraction; his work draws from the brushwork of expressionism and the brainy coolness of conceptualism. David Rimanelli in Artforum called his palm tree paintings, “Edvard Munch goes to the Bahamas.” His arbitrary, kitschy subjects have included the letters of his name, leaves, fish, skeletons, insects, stop signs, sunsets and monochromatic fields of color. All are vehicles to explore the process of painting and looking. His habit of painting and overpainting a subject repeatedly and quickly — sometimes hundreds of times —contributes to their exuberance and brashness, and slyly renders them less precious.

Josh SmithUntitled, 2014.

Oil on canvas, 88 x 77 in. Image courtesy of the artist and

Luhring Augustine, New York.

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Daniel Lefcourt’s relief paintings on panel and canvas are created using a complicated system of technologies and materials, including computer modeling and machining, photography and sculptural casting. His surfaces are drawn by the minute movements of paint, dust and debris captured by the macro lens of a digital camera and formed into low relief computer models. He then machine carves these models directly onto the panels and finishes by hand with layers of resin and graphite to enhance the details of the surface. Lefcourt utilizes the potential of digital imaging and object production, yet tests and complicates its simulation abilities by interjecting chance, hand processes and materials.

Daniel LefcourtGraphite Painting (10X), 2014. Graphite, resin on machined fiberboard panel with pine frame, 60 x 44 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Jeff Elrod uses a digital process he calls “frictionless drawing” to free his mind and distance his hand in his large-format abstract paintings. In the early 1990s he painted abstractions inspired by supergraphics and video game imagery. In more recent work he uses the computer to facilitate an improvisational approach, “a digital breed of automatic writing.” Using Photoshop, he draws and reworks compositions that he then renders on canvas by hand, using tape to crisply and deeply paint his white lines into the black field. For Elrod, the blending of the digital and analog connects the illusionary spaces created in the painting and on the computer screen — perceived through a flat surface, both seem to possess depth.

Jeff ElrodSeconds, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 107 x 84 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

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Eddie Peake works in video, photography, painting, sculpture, installation and performance. While studying at the Royal Academy in London, he famously staged the performance, Touch (2012), a nude football match in a park, wittily presenting the ambiguities of sexuality and gender in contact sports. Sisters is one in a series of neon-colored paintings where he spray-paints on a reflective steel surface, using masking tape to mark out words and images. The negative space forms the words with the viewer reflected in the revealed surface. These paintings share the risky social energy of his performances with their street art vocabulary and are metaphors for the gaps between our verbal and nonverbal communication. This piece references Peake’s sister, a dancer and collaborator in some of his work.

Eddie PeakeSisters, 2012.

Lacquered spray paint on polished stainless steel,

39 3/8 x 55 1/8 x 1 15/16 in. Image courtesy of the artist and

White Cube, London; photo by Lewis Peake.

Avery SingerHappening, 2014.

Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 118.11 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

Avery Singer’s graphic paintings stand out in the exhibition for their figurative tableaus. Her blocky figures, crosses between a sculptor’s mannequin and an avatar, enact clichéd scenes from artists’ lives and art history, such as working in the studio, visits with collectors, bar scenes and, here, a 1960s-style art happening. Singer stylistically draws from modernist, utopian art movements of Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism. She uses 3D modeling software and other contemporary tools to sketch her compositions and then slowly transfers them to canvas with an airbrush. Despite the exaggerated modeling and raking light, the paintings are cool and flat, and the subjects seem bored and distant. The works mock the pretensions of painting and the fantasy of the bohemian artist lifestyle, while longing for it at the same time.

i http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HSD_Sleek-Magazine_2014.pdf

ii Artist quotes from http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/jeff-elrod

iii David Rimanelli, “Reviews: Josh Smith”, Artforum, (December, 2013), p. 260.

iv http://www.thenewinquiry.com

Hugh Scott Douglas Untitled, 2013. Dye sublimation print on linen, 80 x 200 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

Hugh Scott Douglas’ work explores questions of authenticity and the abstractions inherent in global economic systems and digitization. He has previously used a historic cyanotype photographic process to create nonobjective, painterly compositions. In this series, he uses a commercial printing process to capture, enlarge and frame official and unofficial marks on currency. Some of these marks are doodles and graffiti; others like the ones here, are more uniform and purposeful, perhaps put there by a bank, casino or drug dealer. “For me, the real point of interest is more from our lack of ability to understand what they are. They’re a purely speculative moment.” i

IF YOU WERE GOING TOHAVE A REVOLUTION

YOU’D HAVE TO START OVER FROM THE

BEGINNING. — Lyubov Popova

PRESENCEWhat does the term “painterly” mean in an age of ever-immersive technology? Looking back nearly 100 years to early Russian Constructivist painters, the term had the potential to revolutionize society, but does it still?

In 1917, the same year as the Russian revolution, Russian painter Lyubov Popova created a painting titled Painterly Architectonic that attempted to go beyond the frame and evoke an energetic rhythm. Pursuing a move into abstract three-dimensionality, she layered dynamic colors and geometric vector forms to create a sense of space. In doing so, she positioned herself as one of the most important artists in Russia as well as one of the co-founders of the abstract movement. She viewed the idea of abstract art as a metaphor for the construction of a new modern society, and through the lens of radical architecture she saw the possibilities for how painting could play a role in social change. Popova was interested in the fusion of art and life to sustain the revolution and give a new society a look that would reflect its ideologies. The ultimate question was: How could painting and design help activate that new reality?

Popova described her paintings as “constructions,” for which the pure building blocks are color and line that come

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to intersect, bleed and define. She was also part of the infamous 1921 exhibition, 5x5=25, which proclaimed the death of easel painting and the birth of active art — constructions in the service of technology and industry. As advancements in technology continued, Popova completely abandoned painting and accepted a position as head of the Design Studio at the First State Textile Print Factory in Moscow. She devoted herself to industrial design, where she would finally see her interest in art and life in practice with the design of clothing, textiles, posters and books for the new Soviet society.

TO AGITATE

The technology that many painters and visual artists from the Dada and Constructivist movements turned to was photography. Photomontage made its way into paintings and this new way of working promised a new way of seeing. Perhaps what is important about photomontage is that it became a reintroduction of photography, not as a form of evidence, but rather as a modernist critique on the conventions of representation.

An example of this is the archetypal artwork by Guztav Klucis, Dynamic City, which goes beyond painting as one of the first photomontages rendered. Created in 1919, the work was produced with gouache paint, fragmented photographs and graphite on paper, illustrating sharp geometric vectors and architectural forms. The photographic elements, images of labor and modern buildings, are representative of a progressive future.

“WE REGARDED OURSELVES AS ENGINEERS, AND OUR WORK AS CONSTRUCTION: WE ASSEMBLED OUR WORK, LIKE A FILTER.”— Raoul Hausmann

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In 1920, the First International Dada exhibition was organized. John Heartfield, one of the organizers, suggested, “why paint anything, when photographs of things lie ready to hand and in great abundance?” The artist’s task was no longer to represent the world but to rearrange it. Heartfield also argued that photomontage was a medium of class struggle:

Klucis’ work upholds the principle that the photograph is not just a sketching of a visual fact, but its precise fixation; he also insists that to accomplish its agitational work, the photograph must always be animated by disjunctive means. He thus positions that “the photo fixes a frozen, static moment,” whereas “photomontage reveals the dynamics of life, developing the thematic of a given subject.”

RESETTING MEMORYContemporary painters are incorporating technology into paintings while still embracing the idea and the power of “painterly.” If we look at three important periods of mechanical reproduction where manipulation is a key element, we would make clear lineages between early photography from the 1830s, the cut-up experiments in photomontage and the introduction of Photoshop in the late 1980s and its use in contemporary art.

“THE BASIC IDEA IS TO USE THE DIGITAL TO TRY TO MAKE A BRIDGE BETWEEN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.”— Paul D. Miller

“We must utilize photomontage as a medium of class struggle everywhere where it can find application — in schools, in factories, in academic institutions. In the hands of a person who knows how to utilize it, this medium can become a genuine instrument of struggle, learning, and construction.” iii

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Similar to the idea of “remixing” in music, done by DJs and electronic musicians, the idea of “cut and paste” within a visual and conceptual practice has become a cultural fixture with the rise of the Internet.

Artists such as Ryan Trecartin, Alisa Baremboym, Cory Arcangel and Katja Novitskova are being linked to the term “Post-Internet,” a new, fairly young type of art practice started in the late 2000s. This contested terminology has emerged from the lack of criticism to describe art that is a result of or directly influenced by the Internet.

We can look at abstraction, photo montage and the Internet as major shifts in representation that were fueled by technological advances in which artists are attempting to follow, gather, articulate and inspire changes in culture. The translation of information is then decoded into various forms of art practices where the painterly is blurred with the related effects of social media.

So what does it mean to paint in a post-Internet environment? Can painting still play a major role in the development of finding new visions within culture? Can art still be a tool and a medium of class struggle, as John Heartfield suggested in the 1920s?

Julio César MoralesCurator, ASU Art Museum

i Leah Dickerman, Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012, p. 12. ii http://photoquotations.com/a/303/Raoul+Hausmann

iii Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990, p. 131.

iv Paul D. Miller, Rhythm Science (Mediaworks Pamphlets), MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 6.

In conjunction with Unfixed, the ASU Art Museum presents live video taping and performance by E.S.P. TV

Friday, February 20, 2015 6:30 —8:30 p.m.

Directed by Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie, this expansive project utilizes a mobile television studio to explore analog and digital media, the artist dialogue with broadcast transmission and televisual “liveness.” Each event is a collaboration with local artists to create a new work that utilizes live taping and video mixing teams in front of an audience. The recorded performance, which relates to the fluid use of stylistic models and approaches in Unfixed, will air at the ASU Art Museum, on Manhattan Neighborhood Network public television weekly and online.

Sponsored by the Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles.

Cover Image:Jeff Elrod

Seconds, 2014. (detail)Acrylic on canvas, 107 x 84 in.

Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.