“Good Pictures” Exhibition
Deitch Projects (Grand St.)
This event has ended.
Curated by Austin Lee
18 Wooster Street & 76 Grand Street, New York
What is painting? That is the question that runs across a rectangle of canvas exhibited in the new installation of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York:
WHAT IS PAINTING
DO YOU SENSE HOW ALL THE PARTS OF A GOOD PICTURE ARE INVOLVED WITH EACH OTHER, NOT JUST PLACED SIDE BY SIDE? ART IS A CREATION FOR THE EYE AND CAN ONLY BE HINTED AT WITH WORDS.
John Baldessari’s painting, What is Painting (1966-68), sparked the attention of Austin Lee when he saw the work at the Museum of Modern Art last fall. “It’s been stuck in my head ever since,” Lee recounts. “I think of painting as evidence of a state of mind. Documentation of thoughts. That can take form in an infinite amount of variations.”
Good Pictures, curated by Austin Lee, expands Baldessari’s investigation into what it takes to make a good painting, or more generally, a good picture. In Good Pictures, Lee has brought together artists with whom he has a personal history, some of which he considers part of his artist community. As Lee reveals, “They are artists who have influenced what my idea of painting is. Some through years of discussion, some from only seeing the work online.”
The works in Good Pictures embrace the holistic idea suggested by Baldessari’s painting that “all the parts of a good picture are involved with each other, not just placed side by side.” The exhibition showcases a mix of styles and techniques with some technological experimentation. Baldessari’s ironic painting is an invitation to celebrate seemingly simple “fundamentals of art.” The show is not meant to answer the question, but provide a prompt for artists in a group show to do what they always do.
Austin Lee was born in Las Vegas and currently lives and works in New York. During the past two years, he has presented exhibitions all over the world from Kaikai Kiki in Tokyo to Mosaic Art Foundation in Istanbul to his ambitious solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch in New York in 2019.
A checklist of the exhibition is available at this link.
The artists participating in Good Pictures are:
Marina Adams
Michael Ambron
Kevin Beasley
Genesis Belanger
Judy Chicago
Oliver Clegg
Holly Coulis
Somaya Critchlow
Julie Curtiss
Awol Erizku
Louis Fratino
Dominique Fung
Lenz Geerk
Kati Gegenheimer
Mark Thomas Gibson
Sayre Gomez
Adam Green
Meena Hasan
David Humphrey
Marcus Jahmal
Haley Josephs
JPW3
Hein Koh
Emily Ludwig Shaffer
Dustin Metz
Marilyn Minter
Mario Moore
Katrina Mortorff
Jayson Musson
Dona Nelson
Odili Donald Odita
Erik Parker
Lamar Peterson
Rachel Rossin
Rafaël Rozendaal
Koichi Sato
Jacolby Satterwhite
Sally Saul
Peter Schuyff
Li Shurui
John Szlasa
James Ulmer
John Wesley
Xu Zhen
Installation photos by Genevieve Hanson
Media
Schedule
from September 19, 2020 to November 07, 2020
Tuesday–Saturday, 1–6 pm.