Thursday, March 4, 2021

Emma McIntyre at Chris Sharp Gallery

(link)

The lead at the eponymous, opening with, questions abound, is this an argument/ante/gambit for unambiguously pretty painting? Bogs of the saccharine, positively. Don't sleep on this.
The PR's first paragraph is more classical- appends only minor conceptual hedging: "lyrical recapitulations of the history of abstraction" (lyrical) or the more time honored "historical engagement." These are negligible clauses compared to our decades long cliche, of painters "investigating painting" "rehistoricizing painting" "avoiding-at-all-costs-saying-just-painting." And this PR uses no ironizing verb. Instead the second paragraph spends its juice, arguing "lack of allegiance" "refusal to be limited," "languages to be liberally borrowed from." Until finally, "her articulate frank and unfettered incidents of a body thinking on canvas" which translates almost perfectly to "just painting." In a Merleau-Ponty sorta way. Drips that aren't even ironic. This would all seem slight, so inconsequential, if it didn't feel like an opening readied for crowbars edge. The last line earns its dystopian threat, the window wrested open to the "new horizons in contemporary abstract painting." It may come flooding. An ocean blue strategy eventually coalesces an ocean red with.