"Glee: Painting Now"
2000-09-24 until 2001-01-07
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art
Ridgefield, CT, USA

With the Y2K scare little but a distant memory, it is clear that the Internet is here to stay. New computer technology has permeated every aspect of our lives from the way we learn, communicate, and consume, to how and why we create. The populist aims of the Internet stand in contrast to the individualistic nature of painting the most revered form of art relying on gesture, signature, and originality. We are living at the dawn of a new millennium and a digital revolution, and painting today reflects the promise of this moment while imaginatively commenting on its own past.

The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to present Glee: Painting Now, an exhibition examining artists1 renewed confidence in painting in the face of new visual technologies. A confident, irreverent, and decidedly giddy attitude prevails among the painters represented in this exhibition. The work in this exhibition revels in appealing color, bold lines, and flat, crisp forms, while it consciously skirts weighty subject matter or politicized content. While many contemporary artists are tempted to view art history as burdensome and monolithic, the artists in Glee are all accomplishing the important task of reclaiming difficult, unorthodox moments of post-war visual history. Influences range from Op art and Pattern & Decoration to 3D-computer art and 1970s psychedelia Ð influences that have resisted the strict categorization established by critics for twentieth century painting. Precedents set by artists like Gene Davis, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly are as important to painting now as new computer capabilities, pop culture, and advertising. The works in Glee all point to marginalized artistic traditions, new technologies, and even some historically modernist elements Ð the shaped canvas, saturated color fields, geometric abstraction, for example Ð in order to prove that painting is as culturally relevant as ever in this exciting era. Curated by Amy Cappellazzo, curator at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, and Jessica Hough, assistant curator at The Aldrich Museum, this exhibition features the work of twenty artists: Franz Ackermann, Ricci Albenda, Pedro Barbeito, Linda Besemer, Alex Blau, Greg Bogin, Alex Brown, Ingrid Calame, Sharon Ellis, Jeff Elrod, Carl Fudge, Wayne Gonzales, Peter Halley, Jim Isermann, Sarah Morris, Stephen Mueller, Albert Oehlen, Monique Prieto, John F. Simon Jr., and Yek.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Connecticut

Other Important Exhibitions in Ridgefield