"...The internet at the time felt like so many keyholes to look through. Everything before was found in dusty libraries, had been stuffed into artist catalogs, piecemeal, the one Quaytman "chapter" you saw in person at Abreu.. And Quaytman's paintings magnified the pleasures of this, of a good mystery. The doors of new media opening along with the mystery of Quaytman; it provided its own meta-detective story. ... and better digital resolution with each one. Go look at 2008's documentation
here. Compare it to today's. We see it all now, pornography is the mainstay, all at once as much as you want. There is little left to the imagination, to mystery. ... in higher and higher resolution, eventually returned itself as an endless and inconclusive hall of mirrors. They revealed themselves as paintings."
"Quaytman is forebear to today's painting puzzification. Like any good mystery, it's rife with clues. Painting becomes signs and signals, turn painting into information ...'every detail... is subject to careful control.' Careful control presuming purpose for such ... The careful control of avoiding anything so specific as to be finally graspable, a very very finely tuned house of mirrors. ... Enough mirrors and the ventriloquist need not speak at all?"
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