South Etna Montauk
Curated by Alison Gingeras
Open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 am – 6:00 pm, and by appointment.
The Danish artist Asger Oluf Jorn (1914-1973) is most noted for his ‘modifications’ work, paintings depicting semi-figurative, grotesque forms and irreverent abstractions painted on traditional and often anonymous landscape paintings the artist found and purchased at flea markets and antique shops and dubbed by him, cheekily, as “sofa paintings”.
Jorn sought such things as spontaneity and the absurd, the accidental and the impossible as a means to spark his creative fire and fuel his thought-processes and once quipped “painting is painting’s favorite food”, a remark that summarizes both philosophically and accurately the essential role art and its storied past plays in the conjuring of the modern artists’ art-spirit and their/they art-practices vis-a-vis the very creative act itself.
Jorn’s wit serves as the starting point for Painting is Painting’s Favorite Food: Art History as Muse, the inaugural exhibition at Adam Lindemann’s and wife, Amalia Dayan’s new, and first, joint gallery venture together, South Etna Montauk, which opened July 16, 2020 in the Village of Montauk on Long Island’s East End.
Curated by the world-renowned Alison M. Gingeras, the show was conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is Ms. Gingeras’ hope—in the long absence of our beloved cultural institutions—by way of exploring the many ways today’s artists utilize art history as their central muse, that the exhibit “conveys how vital art history is to our visual and intellectual diet.”
Included in the show are works by Derrick Adams, Glenn Brown, Scott Covert, John Currin, Jesse Edwards, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Rachel Feinstein, Luis Flores, Doreen Garner, Clarity Haynes, Lyle Ashton Harris, Andrew LaMar Hopkins, Jane Kaplowitz, Karen Kilimnik, Dennis Kardon, Chris Oh, Borna Sammak, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Betty Tompkins, Piotr Uklański, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
—Gregory de la Haba