i stumbled upon miguel cortez’s, one of the co-founder’s of polvo, new painting. and i love this one in particular. the layers, the tactile surface, the anthropomorphic forms, and nasty but beautiful mucous finish. and the colors— warm and internal, and foreshadowing.

this makes me think about painting.

as much as many claim, painting is not dead. there is nothing like the physicality and tactile and luscious nature of painting. i’m not so interested in painters because i think they can be kind of boring and take themselves too seriously. but the act of painting and the intimate experience of seeing painting is one of a kind. i’m particularly talking about abstraction, my favorite type of art simply because the point of entry for the viewer is through the form, the color, the stroke. what becomes most interesting for me is painting that aims for much more, painting that often resists two dimensionality and jumps off the surface, that is tactile, sensory, and transcendant and not necessarily romantic. on the flip side its also interesting to see other media that is influenced by painting such as film, writing, dance, and performance.

i think painting is often resisted by other artists and everday people, because it seems to be in a vacuum. a conflicting question continues to arise for me is what can painting be on an everyday level? how can it be transformative? how can its poetics be felt and accessed by everyday people? maybe the answers are lygia clark, alma thomas, cy twombly, yoko ono, helio oiticia, eva hesse, basquiat, ana mendieta…