My Crippled Friend investigates the recent history of the intersection of painterly abstraction and the object. While “painting as object” has often been a formalist issue, the works in this exhibition gather their identity through the subversion of formalism―scrambling and reassembling themselves in an aesthetic shell game where the act of painting is always an investigation of a painting’s ability to push into objecthood.
The result is a collection of works that are each alive in a way that only a painting can be, as well as present in a way that seems more like an object. Impossible to label as one specific medium (“a painting” or “a sculpture”), they are, rather, an often-lumpy but always compelling combination of the two.
Participating artists include: Richard Aldrich, Claire Ashley, Leslie Baum, Anna Betbeze, Sarah Braman, Tom Burr, Tom Burckhardt, Kathy Butterly, Todd Brandt, Sarah Cain, N. Dash, Cheryl Donegan, Michel François, Joe Fyfe, Katharina Grosse, Mary Heilmann, Chris Johanson, Ross Knight, Jim Lambie, Jim Lee, Chris Martin, Sam Martineau, Matt Rich, Cordy Ryman, Nancy Shaver, Daniel Turner, Amy Yoes, and Tamara Zahaykevich.
