05 Thematic Residency: Why are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because They Think it is a Good Idea

What is the future of painting after Conceptualism? What is the future of Conceptual Art after the 1960s? How have the basic conditions of art practice changed, and what words and models could we use to open up the potentials at the heart of these developments in art after Conceptualism?

The dominant models no longer satisfy. It makes no sense to melodramatically invoke the end of painting when the continuous emergence of fascinating work obviously proves apocalyptic endgame scenarios wrong. Yet, to pretend it is possible to go back to business as usual seems equally impossible because the radical expansion of artistic possibilities through the landslide changes of the 1960s leave medium-specific practices in the odd position of being one among many modes of artistic articulation, with no present justification. How can we describe then what painting can do and is doing today?

Likewise, it seems that still we cannot quite convincingly describe to ourselves what Conceptual Art can be. Is it an art of pure ideas? As if that were ever possible let alone desirable! Or is it an art of smart strategic moves and puns? We have advertising agencies for that. The social and political dimension of Conceptualism has been discussed, but often only in dogmatic terms, not acknowledging the humour, the wit, the existential and emotional dimension that has always also been at play in Conceptual Art.

This residency will be an opportunity to produce work, conceptual and medium specific — medium specifically conceptual and conceptually medium specific — framed by an attempt to invent a new language together in discussions that might describe the concerns and potentials of our practice.