Amy Sillman at Sikkema Jenkins
A tragic affair collectors seek "signature" pieces, a signature piece requisite the artist already having a signature and thus emptied of its origination, adolescence, nubility and becoming etc, that Sillmans work, generally, seems about. A signature painting means "in the style of oneself" which sounds affected and self-conscious in a way popular 8 years ago that we thought Sillman had absorbed and moved us past, but here we are: "becoming" is literalized in the animation cell paintings, painting subordinate to precedent and subsequent - provisional - another painting-buzz Sillman had once passed. The most becoming paintings here are the small ones in which the self seems at stake, no Sillman line to hold the Sillman form she once insisted the body-politic of, instead a sort of becoming Frankenthaler, an interesting thing for Sillman to become someone else, not-Sillman.
See too: Amy Sillman at Kunsthaus Bregenz
