Joe Bradley, Daniel Hesidence, Chris Martin, Roger White

Heralds of Creative Anachronism is an exhibition of abstract painting by four artists: Joe Bradley, Daniel Hesidence, Chris Martin, and Roger White. This focused exhibition is raising the question of movements in contemporary practice. It might seem that the cyclical market trends have completely replaced the notion of “isms”, making them anachronisms in today’s cultural production. Can the recent resurgence of abstraction be simply attributed to a reaction against an overload of romantic figuration or is there a renewed need for a universal language of this genre? The exhibition featured in the small front gallery does not attempt to answer this broad question, but rather is meant to stimulate discussion about the issues of abstraction today.

Limiting the presentation to 4 male abstract painters is a deliberate reference to BMPT (Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni) a group that believed in repetitive gesture, challenged the notion of authorship and declared that painting was a self referential practice. However, unlike the organized group that had a strong political agenda, the painters in the show are not denying the notion of personal expression altogether. The exhibition is a light-hearted attempt to create a movement, even a temporary one, for the duration of this exhibition.

The artists continue the lineage of abstraction by infusing it with the elements of pop, minimalism, and conceptualism. Joe Bradley’s work consists of two monochromatic canvases stacked to create a block-like figure. Roger White paints patterns found on clothing and other objects that become abstracted through isolation from the original. Daniel Hesidence painting is an entanglement of brilliant color and bold brushstrokes that appear to be moving across the canvas. Chris Martin, who was first active in the mid-1980s and was known for his strong, graphic, highly textured abstraction will show a painting that utilizes his signature organic shapes and rough surfaces.