🏴Every now & then the question of painting’s position in the contemporary context of the artworld is posited, as if painting & painters are in an orbital crisis of identity or abandonment. And yet we never have seminars about sculpture’s position, or film's position, forget about art criticism’s position, and lest we not forget photography's position. Perhaps the riff on the infamous “We Need to Talk about Kevin” is appropriate here, in terms of identity, abandonment & a “need to talk” with mammy & daddy contemporary context.

Over the years I have curated exhibitions about painting, but tried, & sometimes failed, to avoid discussing its position within a contemporary context, which only leads to neurosis. My discursive engagement with painting has been directed at the painter, not the contextual setting in which painting is both the originary source & popular/capitalist definition of art. Such discourse emphasises the asymmetrical distinction between painter & artist: the painter vulnerable & needy, the artist assured & fluid. So will it be a metaphysical or critical series of talks on painting? Hopefully Schwabsky’s easily quotable noun/verb wordplay re painting/painting is not repeated.

Painting’s position in the contemporary context of Instagram & art fairs is as the art commodity par excellence. Just look at the current Frieze Art Fair posts that crop painted experience into individual loves — “Love is violence” (Zizek). The best painting exhibitions I have experienced are ones wherein I have forgotten context & been enraptured by the setting in which a room full of paintings has been incubated or a room full of paintings incubate. IE: Matt Bollinger’s paintings currently at mother’s tankstation is a very different animal to let’s say Matt Bollinger’s paintings at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. For painting to subvert its objecthood as commodity, we need painting exhibitions that dissolve their singular objecthood into a buttery all-over spread that dis-plays an equal amount of irresolution & resolve. The setting, not context, determines painting's transcendence from mere commodity into fantasy.—James Merrigan