Principal Juror - Staci Boris, Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Juror's Comments - When I was asked to be the juror for the Midwestern edition of New American Paintings, I was both honored and surprised. Honored because many very interesting curators had been my predecessors, and surprised because I live and work in the region that is being examined. Wouldn’t my familiarity with the Chicago and Midwestern art scene give me a slanted perspective of the work that I would be judging? I suppose that in the past I assumed that most of the jurors of these competitions hailed from outside the area in which the art was being produced, giving them a particularly objective and outsider perspective. Believing that I would be biased toward work with which I was already familiar, and perhaps worried that I would unknowingly reveal my proclivities toward one type of painting, I was, at first, resistant to the idea.

Once I realized (with a bit of persuasion) that my location and its proximity to the art in question was an advantage and not a disadvantage, I delved further into the world of Midwestern painting, a world with which I certainly felt acquainted, yet knew there was much more to get to know. In fact, what I found was not Midwestern painting, but just painting, and good painting at that. I found paintings that evoked a sophisticated awareness of and passion for painting and, in general, work that could not be easily compartmentalized. To my delight, I had the opportunity to be introduced to hundreds of artists whose work I had not seen before, as well as view a handful of work I recognized in a slightly different context. Artists living here in the heartland are clearly part of a broader dialogue, and painting is, as expected, alive and well in the Midwestern states. Though Chicago in particular has always been considered a painting town (chiefly figurative due to the strong and influential work of the Imagist painters of the late 1960s and 70s) and still boasts many artists engaged in this practice, I think it is fair to say that, at present, painting does not eclipse the rest of the work being produced in this region, as it perhaps once did. Chicago (and I am narrowing in on Chicago as it is both the center of the Midwest as well as the area with which I’m most familiar) boasts promising artists working in all media. Nevertheless, painting is currently garnering much attention worldwide, and as the continued presence of New American Paintings attests, many artists are seriously and thoughtfully investigating its complexities.

In the past five years, numerous exhibitions in the US and Europe have been mounted to reject the inaccurate claims of painting’s death and to explore the influence of painting on other media, particularly photography and sculpture. Painting enthusiasts will be pleased with this year’s Venice Biennale, which includes an exhibition called Pittura/Painting chronicling painting’s relationship to the prestigious Biennale since Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal paintings (or non-paintings) of the mid-1960s. The exhibition closes on an optimistic note with, among others, the work of John Currin, Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Luc Tuymans, Glenn Brown, Kai Althoff, and Chuck Close, all painters who visibly love pushing around pigment with a brush, yet whose imagery and attitudes are extremely au courant. These artists, and many that have been selected for this issue of New American Paintings, are working within the traditional canons of painting, not against it, producing contemporary images that answer affirmatively to questions about the venerable medium’s relevance.

To detect a regional style among the works presented in this publication would be difficult. While abstract painting is not new to Chicago, it may surprise those who still associate the city’s output with figurative painting that there are so many artists currently working in an abstract or semi-abstract vein, though this type of painting is something that one might also encounter in LA, New York, London or Rio. In many cases it is an abstract art that has clear references to the world outside, in particular to the natural landscape, architecture, and fashion. Geometric elements and patterns that evoke 20th century design are visible, as are biomorphic forms with surrealist undercurrents, perhaps an enduring legacy of works historically collected by numerous Chicago collectors. Artists address these aesthetic concerns as well as more overt socio-political issues (such as gender and identity) in more representational styles, yet the overriding characteristic of the majority of the works selected seems almost quiet, private, and contemplative—as if the artists are looking inward or at least not too far afield from their immediate environment, providing manifestations of private fantasies, dreams, or highly personal reflections. And like the exhibitions mentioned above, they are also explor- ing why one would make a painting in the 21st century, many encouraging a purely visual and visceral experience that provokes thought as well as a physical sensation unique to the encounter between person and paint. And though this publication does not literally afford that one-to-one encounter, I hope it encourages the reader to step out and pursue it, no matter the location.