John Finneran, Jonathan Gardner, John McAllister, Gerda Scheepers, Sam Windett
Much painting has come to resemble pop or electronic music, overfilled genres in which the stifling amount in oversaturated markets leaves little room new, the micro advancements recycled from the waste mines of the past, looking for that new sound that rockets to the top of charts, played in every club - a brief intense pleasure, briefly, before everyone else leeches onto that sound, and once again sounds bland, recycled, grey. Painters seem scrambling for that remix of styles that looks so candy cane pleasurable. A new form, a rethought style, the oblique approach to re-critique past participles, the re-appropriated language of art, pasts verbs become nouns rearranged on a surface.
This show got all the pop of paintings now. That meta-winking but direct surface. The post-critical critical. Shining colors. The just so slight flat, flat-footed picture plane. It looks great. Scheepers paintings definitely hitting the sound of tomorrow’s moment, a sort of meta-kassay poptronics. The Bonnardian Instagram of yesteryear in flat Mcallister. The loosed goose of Finnerman’s Munchian spirtually brushy. Sam Windett’s a little too earnest brushy futurism. And the awkward illustrations. These five have to be making the most desirable paintings today.