I probably shouldn’t like Guillaume Bresson’s work; it’s really not my thing. And what kind of thing is that, that’s not mine? Well, it’s something like what certain Italian critics of the 1980s promoted under labels like ipermanierismo, anacronismo, or pittura colta: a way of painting that depends on using stylistic codes taken from the art of the Renaissance, Mannerism, and above all the Baroque and somehow updating them. Not that it’s absolutely impossible to make good painting today while channeling styles of past centuries—I loved John Currin’s neo-Cranach phase, and would still go

Two distinct perspectives: French artist Dominique Figarella explores painting, its forms, its space, its material possibilities, its accidents as well as its relationship to the image; Raphael Hefti, from Switzerland, looks at the mechanical and chemical processes in the transformation of materials, such as glass, metal, and even photographic paper—processes whose effects he assembles, not only when they are successful but above all when they fail. To see the canvases of the one artist alongside the glass panels or iridescent steel bar of the other calls up reflections relating to current