Artist Günther Förg described painting as a ‘resilient practice’ — always in the now, and expanding rather than ever truly changing. There’s something both comforting and exciting about this. Exciting, because there really are endless possibilities, and comforting because it’s deeply rooting knowing that a contemporary painting can embody all that comes before it in the most subtle of ways.
One such way for Förg was the link of dabbing paint on a canvas, to the act of preparing colour itself. Why not turn testing colour and pigment densities into an art? Embodying the act of free-play experimentation and discernment on his canvases, the pieces celebrate the act of painting for painting’s sake.
This week’s curation is inspired by Förg, and the current exhibition of his last works at Hauser & Wirth London. The below pieces follow Förg in their expressivity, playfulness, and focus on brushstrokes – dabbing, scumbling, stippling, feathering… the options are endless. Even Toni Harrower’s systems paintings evidence a ‘brushstroke’, albeit deconstructed in both defying and abiding by abstract restraints.
Mary West’s ‘Pond’ and Olivia Bartlett’s ‘Guts’ further give us thrashing and swooping paint that marries pastels with electric greens and magentas. Bustling with life these works are in the line of the ‘tried’ and an expansion of the ‘true’.
