The question posed by four artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and approaches to their art making practices is: how can painting remain viable in the current digital age where artists and viewers are inundated with reproduced digital images of every type and kind of art. The four artists whose artworks are included in the exhibition, A Precedes B, are: Max Estenger, George Hofmann, Lorenza Panero and Mike Zahn. This presentation includes new and recent artworks by each artist, all rooted in painting and offering an alternative to digital culture. The artist’s diverse aesthetics and methods of production present a path that recognizes the artist’s hand and beauty manifest in paintings and the experience of viewing. Relative to the exhibition title, a befitting subtitle could also be: Painting and Beauty Precedes Digital Technology.

About the Artists:

Max Estenger’s approach to painting reveals and exposes every aspect of his artworks, including the construction and stretcher bars from the front of the painting as well as the hard-edge geometric shapes and pristine surfaces. There is no illusion or obfuscation, instead he reveres his materials and approach, thus celebrating the literalness and transparency.

George Hofmann’s artworks are painterly, celebrating both gesture and mark making. Rooted in color and feeling, Hofmann’s paintings are about experiences, conveying memories, sensations, moods and perceptions.

The artworks of Lorenza Panero are rooted in color and derived from painting. Her primary medium is light using luminography, a non-photographic process that produces unique color images—essentially a monotype using light instead of a press.

The new paintings by Mike Zahn are reductive and purely geometric yet, realist in that they depict an industrial shipping and receiving department with brown boxes on steel shelving surrounded by institutional walls painted light green. The paintings are full of subtle detail with areas of relief in the grounds while reading as flat with a Pop sensibility. The conceptual underpinning is that the images, while hand-made, are riffing off a purely digital, internet-based industry that has become familiar to one and all during the pandemic. Sort of an ironic twist given the basis for the presentation.

About David Richard Gallery:

Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field—in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.

In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Art Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. The Gallery opened its current location in New York in 2017.

All Artwork  Copyright © Max Estenger, George Hofmann, Lorenza Panero and Mike Zahn, Courtesy David Richard Gallery.

All Photos: Yao Zu Lu