Group Show at The Downer

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It's courageous, setting your art against the outside, to compete with the real. This is space of painting's "pure idiocy." Its hard headed survival. Or the PR more descriptively, "On the whole, [painting] is fully unbothered by its detractors and lumbers on, buttressed by history and money. Like Don Draper telling some irate underling that’s trying to shame him, “I don’t think about you at all.”" Painting is "this invincible thing that is constantly at war with itself is exhilarating." A stupid animal surviving in spite of itself, protected by some aura, which we all love to argue endlessly what. Art, as our collective cloud based MMORPG. As long as there's players, the game continues. 

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff at The Downer

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"'I’m leaving because this is bad. Because it’s really bad, isn’t it?' At a performance of the play Apartment (Mother Courage) (2015) by New Theater at the Whitney Museum, this statement/question was thrown into the audience by critic Claire Bishop as she dramatically walked out halfway through. Bishop happened to be sitting in the row in front of me, before she exited with a group of friends and colleagues. 'Was that staged?' I heard someone behind me whisper. Later that evening I was at a friend’s birthday party, where one of the walkouts approached me, recognising that I had been seated behind him. 'Did people think it was staged?' he asked.
"The Whitney performance was to be the swansong for Berlin’s New Theater, a finale that was to draw to a close the activities of the artist-theatre project, run by Americans Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff..." -Read full: Laura McLean-Ferris, ArtReview

see too: Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff at Cabinet