The introduction of digital processes into the practice of painting inevitably raises questions. Has the Very New irrevocably transformed and indeed usurped the Very Old? Or is the celebratory hype surrounding new media simply the latest installment of the technological triumphalism that has periodically punctuated the history of modern art ever since the invention of photography?

The five large digital prints that make up Gerhard Richter’s series “Strip,” 2011, inserted themselves directly into this debate. The works were intense. Consisting entirely of horizontal bands of vibrant color under

Neil Beloufa belongs to a generation of artists seemingly unburdened by scruples about production or concerns about the readability of works. Still in his late twenties, this young French-Algerian is already surfing art centers and fairs around the globe and producing a sprawling oeuvre that is both formally and conceptually dense and complex. For his recent exhibition in Paris, he pulled out the big guns, as he is wont to do. Not that he presented anything luxurious or ostentatious, however; instead the exhibition space was invaded by a plethora of poor materials: melamine, wire mesh, taped