Giorgio Griffa at Bergen Kunsthall

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What is perhaps important about Griffa is that despite the ledger like accounting of marks, like most Povera, it provided a contingency to Minimimalism index and auto-reflexivity, projecting a trajectory outside literalist theater without a return to expressionism, keeping their hands that Minimalism sought to cut off. A materialism waiting around looking pretty for its 2012/13 "rediscovery" coinciding with the gentle turn in abstraction and Columbia sponge painting that looked so much like it, coming back again just way more soft, but at least someone "remembered" it.

Giorgio Griffa at The Douglas Hyde Gallery



These gain import through Arte Povera, making their restraint sensible, attending to the physicality of painting, the importance in the folds, still crisp, in the heavy cotton. The way they hang hotly against a wall, but still one would hope for the crisp refreshing coolness of Kimber Smith who allowed a little more play in the restraint, making things a little weirder, and little dumber than what’s on here. They’re just so gentle, and nice. I mean they’re nice, but just so nice. In the impoverished context they’re almost sensible, make total sense.