GROUP EXHIBITION

Paint clinging to small, unexpected spaces; everyday stains—tobacco,soil, shellac—relocated to canvas; hints of language within visual fields;gestural trails of brushwork; tiny stitches and scratches; mere centimetresof disruption. . .these are the places of intimacy and incident in the workof the twenty-two artists who graduated from the Yale School of Art’sgraduate program in painting and printmaking in spring 2023. Emerginginto a post-pandemic cultural landscape, the cohort reminds us of theprofound lessons learned since 2020: to dig deep roots and hold asprecious our immediate worlds; to value the exploration and expressionof self, extracted from conventional routines and institutinal systems;and to recognise the vital need to care intensely about those whonavigate these precarious times with us.

The most minute of their highly considered gestures acknowledges thepossibility of individual agency and the power to resist and change thatmight be wrought through the accumulation of micro-acts. Despite itsassociation with a period when the studio walls of abstract expressionistswere shields behind which some artists and critics claimed to transcendthe world (a world, to note, also recovering from global trauma. . .that ofWorld War II), perhaps it is best not to abandon the idea of painting asa field of action. Rather, through these recent graduates’ work, we canprioritise activity embedded in the everyday, in identity, in family, and inhistory. This renewed sense of action is oriented to telling specific ratherthan universal stories, signalling a sense of urgency rather thantimelessness.1 In depicting labor that is generally unseen, postulatingmulti-species points of view, and addressing the complex experiences ofpost-colonialism, race, and gender, these artists produce strongframeworks for observation, articulation, and resolution with aspirationsto impact outlooks alongside form.

But these small actions also encourage close looking—one of the purestand continuing pleasures of encountering art. The artists exhibited hereinvite us to stand back, walk nearer, then take another position toinvestigate the texture of their surfaces. They use the optical to catalysephysical perspective shifts, engaging the whole body in contemplation.As we receive their works, we imagine the touch of soft, skin-like fabric,the attractive tug of magnets, the candied stickiness of mediums, and thevariable burn of light. We linger in sensual emanations of colour and, insome instances, bathe in the rhythmic pulsing of sound. The deliberationwith which each sensation is offered is an invitation to extend the slightintervals of sheer feeling that exist after contact with stimuli but beforelanguage begins to name, categorise, and tame. This exhibition is anopportunity to attune our sensitivities to the primary perceptual gifts ofbeing alive, as we calibrate ourselves to the strategies of artists inspiredby the urgency of living now to create communications that might sustainus into the beyond.

Press release courtesy Perrotin. Text: Kristen Hileman.