Curated by Jeffrey Deitch
If for a long while abstract painting was regarded as a cul-de-sac, seemingly foreclosed to advanced practice, things have certainly turned around in the past decade, and abstraction now characterizes much of the most popular (and marketable) new painting. With “The Painting Factory,” LA MoCA’s trend-spotting director, Jeffrey Deitch, situates the varied practices of Tauba Auerbach, Mark Bradford, DAS INSTITUT, Urs Fischer, Wade Guyton, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Seth Price, Sterling Ruby, and Kelley Walker in a family tree running back through Rudolf Stingel and Christopher Wool to the master of mediated, mechanized painting himself—Andy Warhol. Whether this curatorial conceit illuminates the artists’ practices or masks vital differences remains to be seen, but the endeavor—and its catalogue, which features a text on, or interview with, each artist and a discussion between Johanna Burton, Scott Rothkopf, and James Meyer—promises to stake out contentious territory in this ongoing conversation about painting.
