EVER SINCE MODERNISM taught us the apparently unbreakable habit of reading works of art self-referentially, illusionism no longer concerns what a painting shows, only what it is. For instance, the work of a number of painters (Karen Kilimnik is a key referent: point; Rob Pruitt has also been availing himself of one of the signature material of this show, glitter) gives the illusion of being amateur, obsessive, or simply tacky and decorative. Painting has to perform its own appearance, and just as performance art tends to focus on bodily suffering, contemporary painting registers an incurable

THE GREATER AN OBJECT'S SIZE, according to Edmund Burke, the more violently it excites the retina: Thus giant objects give rise to perceptions of the sublime. His contemporary Richard Payne Knight scathingly responded that if Burke's physiological thesis were true, one's pen and writing paper, held in front of one's nose, would be more sublime than either the spire of Salisbury Cathedral or the peak of Tenerife viewed at a distance. Two and a half centuries on, in her exhibition “Schist,” Tania Kovats reworks the idea of sublime landscape, playing quietly witty, unpretentious games with scale