Expanded Painting

The news is that, after having been allegedly apart for years, painting and sculpture are at last starting to work together. Painting, which has long occupied the flat surfaces of museums, Kunsthalle, Foundations, and galleries, now wishes to expand its horizons and invade the exhibition space. The canvas can no longer contain the force of a painting that wants to break free, escape from its predefined boundaries and transcend the limitations of its two-dimensional nature. Painting has courage; it does not hide behind a thin layer of colour and often turns into three-dimensional matter, challenging the ancient canons of visual art. Expanded Painting is an observation point over contemporary painting as interpreted by young artists who, while maintaining different identities, do not only paint but also sculpt with colour.
Armin Boehm, Sol Calero, Brandon Lipchik, Paul P. and Giuliana Rosso shake common beliefs and add a further dimension to art.
A pictorial work by Giuliana Rosso (Italy, 1992) stands out at an angle, expanding the layered nature of her paintings into a three-dimensional space through the use of material pastel surfaces and sculptures modelled in papier-mâché and plaster.
Armin Boehm (Germany, 1972) looks into the concept of space in satirical portraits and landscapes. Boehm often introduces in a world of dreams and visions a small element taken from the real world, such as a piece of fabric. Split faces and crowded landscapes meet in a new dimension where different times and places merge.
Everyday images are depicted by Brandon Lipchik (Pennsylvania, 1993), who turns digital compositions into tactile pictorial surfaces. While keeping a strong connection with the virtual language, Lipchik’s works are very much linked to our present time dimension through the use of thick brushstrokes of paint.
Sol Calero (Venezuela, 1982) creates welcoming spaces and encourages curious visitors to immerse themselves into sets that resonate with issues of identity, representation, displacement and marginalization. Calero conceives these sets as places where her paintings, mosaics and sculptures are arranged so that they can talk to one another.
The need to expand is also visible in the works by Paul P (Canada, 1977), where from the monochrome canvas roots grow outwards, straying into a geometric frame. A yellow point of light affords a partial view from a window. A ray of sunshine coming from the outside or a room lit up at night.
Expanded Painting is an exhibition about painting intended as sculptural work engaged in an exercise that blurrily combines two spaces, two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Painting and sculpture, while retaining their fundamental difference, tend to be increasingly heading in the same direction.