envoy enterprises is pleased to present Forgotten in The Smile, a group show curated by Matteo Callegari and featuring the work of Drew Beattie, Joe Bradley, Matteo Callegari, Chris Martin, and Anton Zolotov.

The openness of painting to accept and integrate contradictory combinations of materiality and concept drives the work of the five artists in this exhibition. After the divisions between various stylistic labels in painting have largely collapsed (abstraction, figuration, expressionism, conceptualism), these painters are interested in a variety of hybrid approaches within individual paintings or across the range of paintings made. Ongoing conventions of the medium are embraced while being challenged by unconventional means and methods aiming at perpetual renewal. The work is aggressive, smart and irreverent. It comes from a restless and experimental studio practice that courts a fine line with failure to find fresh, relevant possibilities. There is a belief in the physical presence of the painting, in its nakedness. The work exists in a peculiar zone, the result of the interplay of removal and presence, clarity and exaggeration.