Painting is a language intended to be complex and layered with meaning. I believe that both the meaning and the paint itself act together. Think of this: beautiful form, color, line; in conjunction with meaning, content purpose. I am tired of quick, appearance-only, or content-only art.
Thus I am embarking on my quest to survey what is OUT THERE and note it for the future. I am looking for three criteria:
1. engagement with visual language.
2. exploration of specific and complex content. (Narrative, concept).
3. relation of visual language to content or narrative: reinforcing, contrasting, or expanding the the narrative through the language itself
In example:
Amy Sillman. You know her, you love her. Her work satisfies all the above criteria with freshness and immediacy. Actually, to me the narrative is often unclear-- but there is a specificity in her language which leads me in: I feel there is something in this world, something going on, and I look towards the use of language to unravel the content. And the specificity of her language is the first clue that the language embeds a content.
On the other end of the spectrum, consider the paintings of Emily Noelle Lambert. Her paintings are strongly narrative/ content driven. Some of her works are very powerful, particularly those with also have strong abstract form. Where she loses the internal structure of the painting is where they are weakened. But overall, her strange stories are a dream to be pulled into.
