STEPHEN TRUAX



Wish You Were Here at Ochi Projects, Sun Valley, ID, includes two gouache paintings (December 17, 2022 - January 28, 2023).

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, Ilan's Pool, 2022, Gouache on paper, 10 x 14 inches / Framed: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches




Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, Thomas on a Green Towel (4), 2022, Gouache on paper, 10 x 14 inches / Framed: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches






A Light That Swam Like Minnows, curated by Aaron Michael Skolnik, at Bill Arning Exhibitions, Kinderhook, NY, includes two gouache paintings (November 5 - December 16, 2022).

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, Fire Island 8-15-2022, 2022, Gouache on paper, 10 x 14 inches / Framed: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches




Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, 2022

Stephen Truax, Thomas on a Yellow Towel, 2022, Gouache on paper, 10 x 14 inches / Framed: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches






Any Distance Between Us, curated by Stephen Truax and Dominic Molon, at RISD Museum, Providence, RI, explores the power and significance of intimate relationships in works of contemporary art. Almost all of the thirty-five participating artists identify as queer and/or people of color. The exhibition's forty artworks, made from 1954 to 2021, are drawn from active artists' studios, private collections, and from the RISD Museum's permanent collection.

Together, they reflect a profound cultural and political shift over the last seventy-five years in representations of sexual orientation, gender identification, class, and race. Any distance between us draws poetic connections between works from disparate media (including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, and prints), distinct historical moments, and different cultural contexts.

It includes works by Patrick Angus, Alvin Baltrop, Tom Burr, Katherine Bradford, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Paul Cadmus, Patrick Carroll, Kennedi Carter, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, TM Davy, Angela Dufresne, Jess T. Dugan, Nicole Eisenman, Louis Fratino, Aaron Gilbert, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christopher K. Ho, David Hockney, Sholem Krishtalka, Doron Langberg, Deana Lawson, Catherine Opie, Jack Pierson, Elle Pérez, Aurora Mattia, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sage Sohier, Hugh Steers, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tom of Finland, Salman Toor, Keith Vaughan, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz. (July 17, 2021 - March 13, 2022).



TM Davy

TM Davy, Planets by the Moon, 2021. Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 in. Courtesy of the artist and  Van Doren Waxter.




Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr.

Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr., Syllables of joy and devastation (2), 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.




Katherine Bradford

Katherine Bradford, Long Time Lovers, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and CANADA, New York. Photographer: Joe DeNardo.




Elle Perez

Elle Pérez, Mae at Riis, 2020. Elle Pérez, 47 Canal. Image courtesy of the artist and 47 Canal, New York.




Salman Toor

Salman Toor, Two Boys with a Dog, 2020. Museum purchase: gift of Avo Samuelian and Hector Manuel Gonzalez. RISD Museum, Providence. © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.




Stephen Truax comments, "'What relationship is safe enough to make it the subject of one's work?' I asked in a review of Nicole Eisenman's 2016 exhibition at Anton Kern in New York. Since asking that question -- which is about being vulnerable -- my curatorial and artistic practice has driven me to visit the studios and write about other young, queer artists in New York City, many of whom are included in this show. I find their work to be tender and without irony, almost sentimental, and unapologetically beautiful -- all qualities I thought as a student at RISD were beyond the limits of contemporary art. Like Eisenman, these artists seemed to represent everything the New York art world could be but wasn't."

Truax adds, "Any distance between us expands on my 2018 curatorial project, Intimacy, which was presented at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. That show, like this one, celebrated queer artists active today in context with a rough historical lineage of queer art from which their work emerged. This exhibition is enriched by pairing objects from the RISD Museum's broad collection with works being made right now, this year. In the wake of the AIDS crisis, young queer artists so often are cut off from historical predecessors like Alvin Baltrop, Patrick Angus, and Hugh Steers, who also turn inward to their lived experience and identity to make a powerful, political gesture. This exhibition of radical queer art made over the past three quarters of a century articulates this important and sometimes overlooked artistic movement, and visualizes that essential art-historical through-line of these humble, unassuming practices. My hope is that this show will embolden artists at RISD today to make work that is authentic and meaningful to them, fearlessly rooted in their everyday lives."

Dominic Molon states, "This exhibition -- and especially the acquisition of much of the work that comprises it -- demonstrates the RISD Museum's commitment to recognizing and celebrating the brave portrayal and documentation of affecting personal moments in the lives of people of color and the LGBTQIA+ community by artists of color and artists identifying as LGBTQIA+. Works by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Kennedi Carter, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, and Deana Lawson, for example, underscore the exhibition's emphasis on the importance of self-representation -- specifically of African Americans in the case of these four artists. The power of the romantic bond between two people is poetically addressed by Tom Burr, Elle Perez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Salman Toor, among others. Any distance between us also provides an opportunity for reflection on a year defined by the solitude or compulsory closeness of the COVID lockdowns."





You Got Your Secret On, curated by Aaron Michael Skolnik, at Quappi Projects, Louisville, KY, includes a group of gouache landscape paintings. (June 25 - September, 2021).

Stephen Truax, 2020

Stephen Truax, Oceanfront Property (Fire Island 6), 2020, Gouache on paper, 9 x 12 inches / Framed: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches




Stephen Truax, 2020

Stephen Truax, Oceanfront Property (Fire Island 7), 2020, Gouache on paper, 9 x 12 inches / Framed: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches




Stephen Truax, 2020

Stephen Truax, Oceanfront Property (Fire Island 8), 2020, Gouache on paper, 9 x 12 inches / Framed: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches




Stephen Truax, 2020

Stephen Truax, Oceanfront Property (Brooklyn Rooftop), 2020, Gouache on paper, 9 x 12 inches / Framed: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches








"The Marks Men Leave," a second-person narrative text, is included in the book, You & i are Earth, edited by Fergus Feehily, published by Paper Visual Art, Berlin/Dublin. (March 2020)


You can walk through these spaces and often not find anyone. But there is a lingering sensation that someone is there. Recent footprints run through sandy trails. They link together through the pitch pine shrubland in the configuration of two interlocking figure eights. Two open areas cap these enclosures, and deeper into the woods the paths extend in a less formal way. Men draw these trails daily, cruising for anonymous sexual encounters. Foot traffic made visible by continuous use -- these are desire lines.

Inside the enclosure, the canopy forms a dome overhead. The walls are thickets of gently curving branches of shadblow trees. Older hardwoods are central elements around which the spaces are organised. The long, knotted roots extend out at knee-height like decorative column bases. They crisscross the pathways to form stairs. Some trees dislodged from the side of the dune expose their white root systems and arc up into sculptural form.

Mostly everyone thinks it's an old tradition killed off by police enforcement and the convenience of gay hook-up apps. But there are still signifiers of the activity at hand throughout the brush: wadded tissues, condom wrappers, beer cans, cigarette butts. Someone has hung up a plastic grocery bag from one of the trees. There are several wide roots men have sat upon like benches. The clarity of the footpaths is the result of certain plants removed, dead trees and roots destroyed to make way. Everything else remains as it would be without human intervention.

Secluded on a slight elevation away from regular pedestrians, you'll find this area on a certain stretch of land between the Pines and Cherry Grove. It is a federally protected nature reserve on Fire Island, New York, and has been in use since the 1950s. How did this completely natural site, known colloquially as the Meat meat Rack, become a centre of queer social life for over six decades?

On the low side of the hill, there is a winding trail along an open swamp from which grows bamboo. On the high side, there is a wide avenue of white sand called the Judy Garland Memorial Path. Straight couples and children amble along the path, unaware of what transpires nearby. Men are protected by the shade of trees, the walls of the underbrush, a shield of plants and leaves.

A presence hovers nearby, like the feeling of being watched or pursued. You glance back over your shoulder. The rustle of a grey catbird shuffling through dead leaves on the forest floor startles you. A garter snake recoils in the dune grass from the vibration of your feet. The mosquitos are especially bad after the rain. Leaves move in the wind. The sound of voices emanate from the beach or up from the path below. It could be someone approaching. Deer graze here with their fawns, browsing on muscular leaves.

But circling back through the familiar pathways, you confirm no one is there.

Other times, it's crowded with men; too many to make sense of. Even rowdy groups pass through issuing unwelcome noise in the otherwise sacrosanct silence. Perhaps, one early morning you run into a married man. He is in his forties, his rose gold band bright on his ring finger. He is spread-eagled up against a tree. Two young men stand close behind him. One has his back to you, stark naked and still, looking out, as does the man in Frédéric Bazille's 1868 painting The Fisherman with a Net. Nothing more beautiful than skin illuminated by dappled light against a blue-green backdrop of trees. Some liquid drops into the dirt of the forest floor with a quiet grunt and a sigh. All of the evidence of the encounter is made almost immediately invisible. The sand on the ground covered in footprints swallows it.

The impossible complexity of the pine woods snaps into crisp focus. Each leaf with its six spines in glossy green; each elegant coniferous branch cranes out into space. The outer edge of rotating spiral trunks of a group of thirty or more trees blaze yellow in the setting sun. Abstract shapes of sky appear, framed by transparent overlapping leaves. Waning orange rakes through the leaves and needles studded with pinecones. Deep greens and ashen branches are radiant color. At certain places, the vista opens up like a surprise. From the forest, the sea is visible in the distance under the pale, almost white blue sky dotted with pink clouds.




A gouache landscape painting is included in The Many Faces of Bill Arning, an exhibition to celebrate the curator's sixtieth birthday, at Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York. (July 22 - August 28, 2020).




A handmade quilt collaboration between Debra Truax, the artist's mother, and Stephen Truax, and a plein-air gouache painting were included in Dynasty, curated by Christopher K. Ho and Sara Reisman, at PS 122 Gallery, New York. (October 25 - December 1, 2019)


Debra Truax & Stephen Truax, 2019

Debra Truax & Stephen Truax, 2019

Debra Truax & Stephen Truax, Quilt Painting (Landscape), 2019, Cotton, 50 x 60 inches / 127 x 152.4 cm



Stephen Truax, 2018

Stephen Truax, Oceanfront Property (Floriday Day 3), 2018, Gouache on paper, 8 1/2 x 14 inches / 21.59 x 35.56 cm




An unfinished plein-air gouache was included in Notebook, organized by the artist Joanne Greenbaum at 56 Henry, New York. The exhibition was reviewed in ARTFORUM. (February 9 - March 31, 2019)



Two gouache landscape paintings were included in The Emoji Show at Klaus von Nichtssagend, New York. The exhibition was reviewed in The New York Times. (July - August 2018)


Stephen

Stephen Truax, Upstate Property (Bright Day 2), 2017, Gouache on paper, 9 1/2 x 12 inches / 24.13 x 30.48 cm




Intimacy (June - August 2018), curated by Stephen Truax, at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, traces predominantly LGBTQ-identified relationships in contemporary art over the past forty years. The exhibition includes the work of nearly forty artists and estates: Patrick Angus, Lyle Ashton Harris, Katherine Bradford, Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr., Elijah Burgher, Paul Cadmus, TM Davy, John Dugdale, George Dureau, Nicole Eisenman, Louis Fratino, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, EJ Hauser, Christopher K. Ho, Peter Hujar, Stephen Irwin, Bill Jacobson, Kristen Jensen, Sholem Krishtalka, Kia LaBeija, Doron Langberg, Kristina Matousch, Robert Mapplethorpe, McDermott & McGough, Samantha Nye, Elle Pérez, Jack Pierson, Bryson Rand, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Michael Stamm, Hugh Steers, Richard Renaldi, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jesse Wine, David Wojnarowicz, and Kohei Yoshiyuki. The exhibition ran from June 28 through August 24, 2018.


Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy,

Intimacy, 2018, curated by Stephen Truax at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.
Installation view © Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.


The exhibition was reviewed in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail Dazed, and Garage/Vice. It was previewed in ArtNet, ArtNews, and The New York Post.

Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to present more than seventy artworks in Intimacy, curated by Stephen Truax. The exhibition traces the presentation of intimate relationships over the course of forty years in painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and works on paper.

Intimacy focuses on the 1980s through the early 1990s, and the present decade, two key timeframes marked by dramatic social change: The former by the tragedy of the AIDS crisis, the latter by increasing public acceptance of LGBTQ-identified communities and medical advances in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In these two periods, the exhibition links disparate formal and conceptual approaches to themes of love, loss, and interrelation. From Paul Cadmus' drawing from the late 1970s, to works made for this exhibition, such as Kristen Jensen's site-specific ceramic and fabric sculpture, these works celebrate the seemingly unremarkable moments of everyday lives lived together.

Intimacy proposes that this group of nearly forty artists from both time periods turn inward to personal experience and to the expression of individual identity as a political gesture. Exploring complex relationships -- sex, sexuality, and the body -- and how those relationships are necessarily affected by intersectional identities, the artists are from widely diverse backgrounds across race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation and nationality.

While a rise in activist and protest art was evident in the late 1980s through the early 1990s, when artists addressed head on the AIDS epidemic and themes of identity politics the crises provoked, an emergence of quiet, intimate bodies of work, often depicting domestic settings, also rose in prominence. These more private subjects are featured in this exhibition.

Photographs from this period by Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin and David Wojnarowicz reflect their autobiographical experiences. Portraits by George Dureau and Robert Mapplethorpe expose the personal relationships each shared with his models off-camera. Jack Pierson and Lyle Ashton Harris elaborated on this strategy, making work just as probing and personal about their lives, loves, and queer experiences. These artists became key figures, inspiring the younger artists in this exhibition.

Figurative painters Patrick Angus and Hugh Steers, both active in New York in the 1980s-early 90s, dealt with overtly queer, domestic imagery; both succumbed to AIDS-related illness. Rob Stuart, whose portrait Angus painted in Stuart's own bedroom, wrote touchingly in his 1990 poem, "I sit for Patrick Angus": "To be undressed. To be sitting for a man / I loved. I was happy for this." In Steers' painting, Two Men and a Woman, 1992, a woman washes a naked man suffering from AIDS while his partner looks on, capturing the agony of watching a loved one pass away. Both painters, though underrepresented during their short lifetimes, made work that became instrumental in queer figurative painting today.

As Angus and Steers were in the twilight of their lives, Nicole Eisenman was just emerging from art school. It was the groundbreaking work of artists like Eisenman who spearheaded a return to figurative painting in the current decade. Her explicit images depicting figures of indeterminate gender engaged in emotional and sexual relationships, as in Lindsay's, 2016, on view in the show, paved the way for other young contemporary painters. It is on this trajectory that we locate the work of artists like Katherine Bradford, TM Davy, Louis Fratino, Samantha Nye, and Michael Stamm.

Parallel to the return to figurative painting, queer photography by artists like Wolfgang Tillmans and Katy Grannan emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. Both artists have created bodies of work that are bracingly intimate, and rely on the artists' personal relationships; more than this, they create relationships with their subjects for the viewer. They serve as touchstones (and even teachers) for the work of a generation of younger photographers like Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Kia LaBeija, Elle Pérez, Bryson Rand, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

Not all of the works in the exhibition are set in domestic space; many works depict men gathering together in urban parks and forests, as we see in the 1979 infrared photographs of Kohei Yoshiyuki. Similarly, new works by young painters Elijah Burgher, Sholem Krishtalka and Doron Langberg, all point to a special kind of intimacy gay men can find cruising together in the woods.

Other works in the show move beyond the strictly figurative and representational. Stephen Irwin, Christopher K. Ho and Kristina Matousch also address domesticity, but from a conceptual distance. Toward the end of his life, Irwin, who also died of AIDS-related illness, made exquisite images of loving embraces by rubbing out, or painting on appropriated pulp pornography. Ho offers Dear John, 2017, a large-scale laser-cut carpet installation decorated with heart emojis that support a cluster of 3-D printed glass blocks etched with a portrait of a young man; nearby, a small statue of a woman staring forlornly at her smartphone, perhaps reading a contemporary "Dear John" letter. Swedish artist Kristina Matousch's steel plates bear the marks of a typical domestic stovetop that was turned on, a deceptively simple gesture that is both violent and suggestive of caring for another in the home.

EJ Hauser, Jesse Wine, and Kristen Jensen create unique symbolic languages that point to relationships. Hauser inscribes ME + YOU, and YOURS into her paintings and drawings. Jesse Wine's tableau, Well, there's no accounting for taste is there, 2017, suggests a couple in repose on a sofa. Kristen Jensen designs her soft denim sculptures to support and protect a ceramic object in a kind of physical, bodily embrace. These abstract presentations of relationships -- between the artist and subject, artist and viewer, and between objects in a single work -- add to the diverse approaches to portraying intimacy in artwork being produced today.

Intimacy connects two specific art historical moments in which artists turn inward to their own lives and their intimate relationships as their subject. Just as artists did in the 1970s, and increasingly during the '80s and '90s, artists today plumb their life experience for their subject matter, and present it transparently. Their work is romantic, beautiful, and intended to emotionally move the viewer. This approach has been taken to surprising conclusions in the most recent works in the show. The exhibition also organizes an informal queer history, ending with a younger generation of LGBTQ-identified artists who can, unlike so many before, enjoy having older, queer mentors: those who survived.




An essay on contemporary figurative painting, "Why Young Queer Artists are Trading Anguish for Joy," with interviews and studio visits with TM Davy, Louis Fratino, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Sholem Krishtalka, Doron Langberg, Sam McKinniss, and Michael Stamm, commissioned by Artsy. (November 2017).



A review of Martin Boyce, Sleeping Chimneys. Dead Stars. at Tanya Bonakdar, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail. (June 2017).



A review of Stephen Irwin, Check to see if still dead inside., at Invisible Exports, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail. (May 2017).



A review of Sputterances, organized by Sanya Kantarovsky at Metro Pictures, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail. (April 2017).



A review of EJ Hauser, ME + YOU, at Regina Rex, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail (April 2017).



How Will I Know, curated by Dr. Anne Luther, at 67 Ludlow, New York, was reviewed in ArtPulse magazine, Miami, by Terence Trouillot. (March 2017)



Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Installation view: How Will I Know, curated by Anne Luther, 2016, including Cruising Ground (Hasenheide) I, and Cruising Ground (Hasenheide) II, both 2015.




A review of TM Davy, Horses at 11R, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail (February 2017).



How Will I Know (October 2016), an exhibition of drawings, photographs, texts, and a sound work, curated by Dr. Anne Luther, at 67 Ludlow, in New York. The works construct a nonlinear narrative of the shared experience of three men. The exhibition ran from October 7 through October 29.
 
Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Stephen Truax, Cruising Ground (Hasenheide) I, 2015, C-print, 36 x 52 inches, framed, installed on steel piping


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Installation view: How Will I Know, curated by Anne Luther, 2016.


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Stephen Truax, Cruising Ground (Hasenheide) II, 2015, C-print, 36 x 52 inches, framed, installed on steel piping


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Installation view: How Will I Know, curated by Anne Luther, 2016.


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Installation view: How Will I Know, curated by Anne Luther, 2016.


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Installation view: How Will I Know, curated by Anne Luther, 2016.


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know, 2016, sound installation on headphones, duration: 13 minutes


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Eating Ass), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Eating Ass), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Driving), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Driving), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Erection), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Erection), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (In The Morning), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (In The Morning), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Sleeping), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Sleeping), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Sunday), 2016

Stephen Truax, How Will I Know (Sunday), 2016, graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm


Intimate drawings show the domestic involvement of a married couple with a third partner, whose observations become a record of their relationship. The subjects of the drawings, whether real or imagined, oscillate around the question suggested in the exhibition’s title. Truax presents this question in the multiple facets of the relationship and in every image and text: daily pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral medication, the invitation to the privileged life of his partners, and banal objects are examined from a position of hopeful doubt. The narrative fosters a sympathetic relationship between us and the observer.

This narrative is presented in contrast to two photographs that position us standing alone on a foot-worn path in Volkspark Hasenheide in Berlin. Not knowing of what could happen walking further, we are searching for the unknown in these photographs. The possibilities these photographs suggest are only available to gay men cruising for sex. Only the people who know exactly where this particular spot is can find it -- or would even look for it. The anonymity of the photographs, though taken in an public space, suggests an exclusivity in direct comparison to the illimitable openness of the domestic narratives.

In these works, we find ourselves in the cruising ground, in the bedroom, in the car, and thus implicated in the activities that go on there. How Will I Know proposes that personal life can be employed as a statement of continuing political urgency.



A review of Nicole Eisenman's concurrent exhibitions at Anton Kern, New York, and Al-ugh-ories, at the New Museum, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail (July/August 2016).



A review of Raoul De Keyser's posthumous exhibition, Drift, 2016, at David Zwirner, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail (May 2016).



Super Sketchy, an exhibition of drawings organized by Alleyoop Projects at DCTV in New York (April 2016). Triad, 2016, is part of the series, How Will I Know, 2015-2016, which are erotic and intimate drawings of and about gay men.
 
Stephen Truax, Triad, 2016

Stephen Truax, Triad, 2016, Graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches / 29.7 x 21.0 cm



A review of John Walker's exhibition, Looking Out to Sea, at Alexandre Gallery, New York, in The Brooklyn Rail (February 2016).



Golden Age,” a book presentation and panel discussion with Marco Antonini and Christopher K. Ho, at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, (April 2015), Tapp’s Art Center, Columbia, SC (April 2015), and TSA New York (March 2015).
 
Golden Age talk at TSA New York, 2015

Golden Age,” panel discussion with Marco Antonini, Christopher K. Ho, and Stephen Truax, moderated by Alex Paik at TSA New York.
Photo courtesy NURTUREart, New York.



Texts on Lois Dodd, Tamara Gonzales, Ronnie Landfield, and John Walker, commissioned for the online catalog Come Together: Surviving Sandy, edited by Thyrza Goodeve, published by The Brooklyn Rail (November 2014).
 



Interview on contemporary painting strategies in New York with Ariel Dill, Lauren Portada, and Marco Antonini, with illustrations of paintings, for The Golden Age: Perspectives on Abstract Painting Today, edited by Marco Antonini and Christopher K. Ho, published by NURTUREart, New York (October, 2014).
 
The Golden Age

The Golden Age, edited by Marco Antonini and Christopher K. Ho (NURTUREart, New York: October 2014)



Sunday Painter

Stephen Truax, Sunday Painter (Palette Painting), 2013, Gouache, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 in / 76.2 x 116.84 cm


Sunday Painter

Stephen Truax, Sunday Painter (Sunset Painting Blue), 2013, Gouache, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 in / 76.2 x 116.84 cm



Half Drop, organized by Meredith Nemirov, at Telluride Arts 81435 Gallery, with Vince Contarino, Gabrielle D’Angelo, Christopher K. Ho, Benny Merris, Meghan Petras, and Craig Taylor (September 2014).
 















Stephen Truax, Postcards from Berlin, 2014, Gouache and pen on postcard, 4.2 x 5.9 in / 10.6 x 15 cm


[CATALOG]



“What Happens at the Spa,” edited by Sarah Nicole Prickett, a second-person narrative text on gay sauna culture in Berlin, compared to anonymous hookups in New York, published in Adult magazine, New York (May 5, 2014).



Interview on painting, comedy, and friendship, with Jonathan Chapline on his blog, #FFFFFF Walls (March 6, 2014).
 














Photographs courtesy Jonathan Chapline.



“Shock of the View,” a text on the cultural experience and misadventure of the 54th Venice Biennale, modeled after David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” published in Hyperallergic (June 6, 2013).
 





Stephen Truax, Photographs of Venice, 2013



IRL, curated by Mikkel Carl, at Point B Worklodge, New York, included Dora Budor, Nanna Debois Buhl & Liz Linden, Mikkel Carl, Richard Ewans, Marc Ganzglass, Luc Fuller, Parker Ito, Mamiko Otsubo, Kasper Sonne, Brad Troemel, and James Viscardi (April 2013).
 


Stephen Truax, Corporate Monster (Chicago Blackhawks Victory Parade), 2011, Digital photograph, dimensions variable.



Donut Muffin, curated by Jessica Duffett and Tamara Gonzales, at the Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, New York, explored the intersection of sculpture and painting, and was titled after the delectable Brooklyn pastry that is both a donut and a muffin. The show included Mike Amrhein, Sarah Braman, Ariel Dill, Joe Fyfe, EJ Hauser, Clinton King, Pam Lins, Lauren Luloff, Chris Martin, Nathlie Provosty, Robert Rhee, and Christian Sampson (January—March 2013).
 


Installation View: Donut Muffin, 2013, including Stephen Truax, EJ Hauser, Michael Amrhein, Ariel Dill, Christian Sampson, and Pam Lins




Installation View: Donut Muffin, 2013, including Stephen Truax, EJ Hauser, Michael Amrhein, and Pam Lins

Stephen Truax, I never knew a man could tell so many lies, 2012, gouache on stretched paper, plywood, C-clamps, steel, 96 x 86 x 16 inches / 243.84 x 218.44 x 40.64 cm


Stephen Truax’s project-based work brings into conversation the history of painting and the personal experience of the artist in context. The intimate and the formal are put forth on the same plane, advocating for an art that can be at once conceptual and rigorous while simultaneously deeply emotional and personal.

In I never knew a man could tell so many lies, 2012, two thinly painted vibrant abstractions hang on plywood panels. The casual installation brings the presence of the studio into the gallery. Truax’s deft handling of materials in these paintings on paper stretched on traditional canvas stretcher bars pointedly reveals the paintings’ classic preparatory structure. What at a distance are bold gestural abstract paintings, at closer look are delicate arresting works that collapse perceived rankings of materials in painting and its display.

Furthermore, the title itself leaves room for interpretation. This appropriated Neil Young lyric could be just a riff on a common cultural icon. After all, the album On the Beach from which it is derived jives well with Truax’s breezy palette. At the same time, the darker implications of the text reverberate with the role of memory.
 
[CATALOG]

Duffett, Jessica, and Tamara Gonzales. “Donut Muffin” (Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, New York: January 2013)



The independent curatorial project, LOVE, presented by Joshua Abelow’s ART BLOG ART BLOG, at One River Gallery, Englewood, NJ, was an exhibition of twelve Brooklyn painters’ romantic, emotional attachment to painting, their critical distance from it, and their skepticism of it. The show included Ariel Dill, Tamara Gonzales, Marc Handelman, Christopher K. Ho, Clinton King, Chris Martin, Allie Pisarro-Grant, Christian Sampson, Joshua Smith, Chuck Webster, and Roger White (November 2013).
 


Installation view: Love, curated by Stephen Truax, 2013, including Christian Sampson, Tamara Gonzales, Marc Handelman, and Allie Pisarro-Grant




Truax, Stephen. “LOVE: Conceptual Strategies in Abstract Painting” (ART BLOG ART BLOG: November 2012)


LOVE is an exhibition, an effort to contextualize the practices of eleven Brooklyn-based artists working with abstract painting. They were selected to represent a cross-section of the incredible variety of media, styles, and subjects visible in the field today. These artists employ painting in concert with parallel artistic activities, deliberately address the history of painting, and concern their practices with its complex philosophical and theoretical issues. (1) What links these artists together is not a specific generation, nationality, or concept, but rather their approach, exemplified not by irony, cynicism, or a Conceptual apparatus, but rather a romantic and emotional involvement with the subject.
(1) “[Painting] delineates itself as a discursively charged praxis designed to articulate and reflect on the multiplicity of interrelations between image, painterly practice, and artistic aspiration.”
Draxler, Helmut. “Painting as Apparatus: Twelve Theses.” Texte zur Kunst, Issue No. 77, March 2010.

Each art historical revolution is professionalized, subsumed into the art market and its institutions, and subsequently embedded into the Academy to be taught to the next generation of art students as part of the canon. It has become more and more difficult to imagine—or for there to be any possibility of—radical action in artistic production. As the archetype of the artist is deconstructed by contemporary curatorial projects, the identity of the artist is finally divorced from the artwork and its interpretation. As the definition of the artist and artwork is questioned/reinterpreted, and as advanced criticism continues to reject painting, over and over again, since the 1960s (2), why continue to paint?
(2) “[A]n increasing gap between advanced criticism and contemporary painting had been set in motion, a split that essentially continues today ... Advanced criticism, of course, deemed [neo-expressionism of the ’80s] to be amnesiac naivete, uncritical affirmation, even politically reactionary. How might a serious engagement with painting persist in the shadow of such opprobrium?”
Hochdorfer, Achim. “A Hidden Reserve.” ARTFORUM, February 2009.

The legacy of Conceptual art has colored contemporary painting more than any other artistic movement in recent history. The critical objectives of Conceptual art were to undo the two most important and enigmatic elements of painting: “the demystification of artisthood and the eradication of the aura of the work of art.” (3) The painter is the quintessential image of the ruminant genius. Yet, the proliferation of Conceptual, political and social art practices heavily influenced by Marxist philosophy eclipsed the solitary-artist model; art is more than ever a public, social practice. Painting remains inadvertently and necessarily tied to the capitalist system: painting remains the most highly sold and traded of any other artistic medium. (4)
(3) van Winkel, Camiel. During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed: Contemporary Art and the Paradoxes of Conceptualism. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2010.

(4) Velthuis, Olav. Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Modern technology, such as printmaking, photography, and film/video, has long been a force that alienated painting from its elevated position in culture by making content ever-more accessible and reproducible. Each painting is valued for its individuality and irreproducibility, two qualities that can be seen as counterproductive in terms of Marxist philosophy, and luddite in terms of contemporary life. Recent history has introduced even more complex and pervasive technologies of reproduction, such as industrial design, digital media, and augmented reality, making painting even more antiquated.

We encounter innumerable media and practices which have removed the hand of the artist from artistic production entirely: the fetish-finish sculpture of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, the science and industrial design of Olafur Eliasson, or the multidisciplinary philosophy-driven output of Ryan Gander. In contrast, paintings are still almost entirely made by the artist’s hand. The development of a unique gestural vocabulary is perhaps the ultimate project of a painter, one that links painters and paintings back through art history.

A unique lifelong painting “style” inextricably linked with their oeuvre usually expressed by the artist’s hand remains forefront in our thinking about the production of paintings, such as with Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Pollock, and de Kooning. Later, “semiotization of the painterly mark”—as found in the work of Mitchell, Twombly, Johns, Frankenthaler, and later more overtly in Lichtenstein and Warhol—would open new areas of research in the medium. Today, style is but one of many tools at the painter’s disposal today, rather than a signature aspect of an artist’s body of work. With no particular allegiance to a method or style of painting, painters are free to quote from antiquity and recent art history, including contradictory styles.

Contemporary art projects reinforce every decision with specific philosophical or political concepts. As in architecture, every aspect of the work is designed to shape the work’s interpretation. Painting is chosen before and independently of any content or concept. Painting has clearly lost its primacy as the most important artistic practice. Painting’s response has been to “make visible the polarizations and polemics of the ’60s,” by addressing head-on the very philosophical arguments made against it, and applying the same Conceptual methodologies to itself that rendered it impotent in the first place. (5)
(5) “By the late ’60s, Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, and others would argue that painting could remain theoretically sustainable only if it adopted an antimodernist perspective, subjecting itself to the dictates of Minimal and Conceptual art ... Painting in recent years has applied itself to the very problems that the polemics of the ’60s declared dead … Painting has reached a point, it seems, at which it has made visible the polarizations and polemics of the ’60s.”
Hochdorfer, Achim. “A Hidden Reserve.” ARTFORUM, February 2009.

In the wake of the global economic downturn, institutional critique and Marxist philosophy seems increasingly problematic as the basis of critically engaged artistic research. The economic and sociopolitical arguments against painting have become obsolete. This may explain the recent resurgence of painting in critical, curatorial and artistic projects. Painting has become an essential tool for artists’ practices. Paintings that are being made today are exemplified by provisional (6)—i.e., unmonumental—finishes, and are unabashedly beautiful. (7)
(6) Rubenstein, Raphael. “Provisional Painting.” Art in America, May 2009.

(7) Hickey, Dave. “Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty.” The Invisible Dragon. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2009.

Contemporary artists working with abstract painting neither do so blindly ignoring the theoretical and philosophical issues with the medium, as in a politically reactionary manner, nor do they approach the subject in intentionally self-defeating, ironic or cynical approaches (as with Oehlen and Metzger). Painters today paradoxically hold these two contradictory positions (sincerity/irony) simultaneously. This recursive stance seems to be the only way to go forward in the field of art today. Recursion has become endemic in the medium, as we represent every possibility, long after having decided “it had all been done.” It is possible to create a conceptual system of works in which painting is just one component in order to change the role of painting. Many artists choose to work in multiple media, and brace painting, using a cross-compensation approach, with non-painting elements. As painting enters into a meta-art (8) its analysis and interpretation become exponentially more complicated.
(8) “... [painting] as a meta-art, able to assimilate some media effects and to reflect on others precisely because of its relative distance from it.”
Foster, Hal. The First Pop Age:Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2012.

Painters today are able to make a painting no longer be just a painting, but rather, the symbol of the activity of painting. (9) This action mirrors the role of art in contemporary culture. The experience of an artwork is a metonym for art. (10) These artists are employing painting as as microcosm of artistic production (11); the archetype of the artist is personified by the painter.
(9) Nickas, Bob. Painting Abstraction. "The Persistence of Abstraction," London: Phaidon, 2009.

(10) “I always think of paintings as a prop in the sense of their own interior specificity in relation to an outward meaning or function, which to me, is one of incongruence.” — Aldrich

(11) “The act of painting, as a historic form of production, may indeed be obsolete in a culture overflowing with media imagery, but painting as such continues to play a leading role in determining how we experience and think about art at all, irrespective of whether we reject or admire contemporary painting.” — Draxler

In this exhibition, I attempt to present a cross-section of contemporary painting being made in New York today by emerging and mid-career artists, underscoring the conceptual methodologies being strategically employed by painters, and how conceptual artists have turned to painting as a strategy. Painting is no longer relegated to the sidelines of cultural production, but is paradoxically at the forefront of innovation in visual art. These artists believe in the inherent value and the power of painting. They practice it sincerely, with a dedication one can only assign to a lifelong pursuit. Artists continue to paint because they love painting.



The escape from the banal everyday life into the world of the ideal, curated by painter Brooke Moyse, at NURTUREart, New York, with Jonathan Allmaier, Tamara Gonzales, EJ Hauser, and Maria Walker, questioned contemporary painters” relationship with mysticism, and was titled after a notebook entry by Charles Birchfield (November 2012).
 






Installation views: The escape from the banal everyday life into the world of the ideal, curated by Brooke Moyse, at NURTUREart, New York.


Reproduced Photograph


Reproduced Photograph

Stephen Truax, Reproduced Photograph 1 (Study for Ss. Maria in Trastevere 2005), 2012
Archival pigment print, framed: 36 x 25 in / 91.44 x 63.5 cm, Edition 1/3 + 1 AP

Reproduced Photograph

Stephen Truax, Reproduced Photograph 2 (Study for Ss. Maria in Trastevere 2005), 2012
Archival pigment print, framed: 36 x 25 in / 91.44 x 63.5 cm, Edition 1/3 + 1 AP

Reproduced Photograph

Stephen Truax, Reproduced Photograph 3 (Study for Ss. Maria in Trastevere 2005), 2012
Archival pigment print, framed: 36 x 25 in / 91.44 x 63.5 cm, Edition 1/3 + 1 AP


Three 36 x 24 inch framed photographs are images of three unique 6 x 4 inch photographic prints that have been used in studio as source material since they were taken and printed in Rome, Italy, in 2005. The prints were scanned at high resolution using a drum scanner to reveal finger prints, scratches, dust, paint, and other traces of a painting practice.

The images display in high resolution fingerprints, scratches, creases, dust, and other traditionally undesirable elements in photography are visible on the surface of the prints. These elements that link the objects back to the practice of painting. The originals were taken at Santa Maria in Trastevere, in Rome, Italy. All three snapshots were taken in quick succession of one another in order to capture a unique light phenomena where the late fall light poured through the cathedrals stained glass windows and shone as circular and oval shapes of light on colored marble columns.

The images take on the cliche of light streaming through cathedral windows. The images depict signifiers of true authenticity: marble columns, sunlight, taken on-site at an ancient cathedral, etc. The originals are blurred and out of focus, suggesting the haste of their making, a moment of authentic inspiration. They have a strong relationship to abstract painting with their all-over compositions, strong emphasis on color, and paint-like blurry elements that recall brush strokes.

They have been highly refined and run through multiple professional and technological processes to realize the work presented. A moment of romantic excitement about an instant of visual beauty is analyzed and reproduced to a degree that negates their original spontaneity and questions their authenticity.

The images of the photographic prints are presented as totemic objects, the light picked up on the edges of the prints making them seem larger, heavier, and more sculptural than the originals ever could be. They are a monument to a romantic and spiritual experience. They fetishize the objects’ importance in the studio. They funnel all activities in the studio back into artistic production. They qualify the minor action of taking a snapshot to a wall as source material as an artistic gesture.
 
[CATALOG]

Moyse, Brooke. The escape from the banal everyday life into the world of the ideal (NURTUREart, New York: November 2012)



A two-person exhibition with Carol Salmanson at Storefront Ten Eyck, New York (April 2012).
 


Install shot




Stephen Truax, Untitled 1 (The Xena Series), 2012, Gouache, pencil on stretched paper, 20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.64 cm



Stephen Truax, Untitled 2 (The Xena Series), 2012, Gouache, pencil on stretched paper, 20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.64 cm



Stephen Truax, Untitled 3 (The Xena Series), 2012, Gouache, pencil on stretched paper, 20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.64 cm



Stephen Truax, Untitled 4 (The Xena Series), 2012, Gouache, pencil on stretched paper, 20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.64 cm



Stephen Truax, Untitled 5 (The Xena Series), 2012, Gouache, pencil on stretched paper, 20 x 18 in / 50.8 x 40.64 cm


The Xena Series proposes a paradox: contemporary painting can be simultaneously self-questioning and sincere. This recursive stance occupies two contradictory positions. One, painting’s acknowledgment of its own history and emotional meaning. And two, the impossibility that painting can be unselfconsciously meaningful in a contemporary context.

The paintings teeter on the edge of craft by referencing quilting and decorative arts, yet also recall classical spiritual or religious imagery. Although made with materials traditionally used in design and drawing (the hand-drawn pencil grid remains visible in the final image) these works are clearly paintings intended to test the boundaries of the medium.

By isolating common symbols and archetypes from historical, sacred sources and representing them in new, self-consciously-designed works, the artist connects motifs of ancient art and architecture with the practice of painting today. The Xena Series proposes a link between the belief-infused visual language of the past and self-conscious contemporary thought.



WE ARE: Chelsea Haines & Eriola Pira, an exhibition with Scott Lawrence and Anton Terziev, curated by Chelsea Haines and Eriola Pira, was a part of the WE ARE: series, organized by Marco Antonini at NURTUREart, New York, on humor, and its use today in contemporary practice, which also included a stand-up comedy open mic (August 2011).
 




Install shots



Stephen Truax, Stacked Canvases, 2008—2009, Gouache, acrylic on canvas
Three stacks: 12 x 12 x 16 in, 10 x 10 x 16 in, 8 x 8 x 16 in / 30.5 x 30.5 x 40.6 cm, 25.4 x 25.4 x 40.6, 20.3 x 20.3 x 40.6 cm




Stephen Truax, The Artist’s Shoes, 2004—2009
Photograph: 4 x 6 in / 10.16 x 15.24, shoes: approx. 12 x 3 x 5 in / 30.48 x 20.34 x 12.7 cm




“DIY Bushwick” and “Artists in Bushwick,” a two-part text, attempts to create a contemporary history of the artist-rich community of Bushwick, Brooklyn, analyze how the neighborhood has transformed from 1999—2011, and figure out what artists are doing there now, published in The Brooklyn Rail (June—July 2011).



Portal, an independent curatorial project co-organized with curator Janis Ferberg, was a series of video, digital media, and sound exhibitions, and commissioned live social media performances, that connected audiences between Sydney, Beijing and New York. Portal was hosted at Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (ICAN), Sydney, and Regina Rex, New York (July—October 2011).


Portal is a cross-platform project, organized by Janis Ferberg (Sydney) and Stephen Truax (New York), inviting artists, writers, and audiences to engage in a series of exhibitions of time-based art—including video, new media, sound, and performance—that will survey the changing nature of performance in a moment of digital connectivity.

In recent years, we have seen the increasingly radical transformation and reorganisation of the way human beings communicate. The ever-growing presence of the Internet and social media platforms have rendered the previously localized notions of context and community even less dependent on geographical proximity and have created an alternative space for people to interact in real time.

Portal asks how increased interconnectivity through digital technology is affecting the way artists are thinking about artistic production and how audiences are being developed, gaining access to, and experiencing new work. Portal's program of events will be hosted in venues and galleries internationally and augmented online, connecting globally dispersed audiences with critical content and to each other through the Portal website.

Beginning in August 2011, Portal will present two simultaneous video art exhibitions, exchanging the work of emerging artists from Sydney and New York. This exchange will be hosted by Regina Rex in Brooklyn, New York, and ICAN in Camperdown, Sydney. The video works from both exhibitions will also be presented online for those who cannot attend in person. Portal sees the position of the "emerging artist" of one generally characterized by its immediate community—connected to place, and largely developed through the social networks that support it. By exhibiting these artists work outside of their local context (e.g. their home city) as well as in a potentially-neutral space online, Portal is testing the idea of a global art community, and whether, specifically, context contributes to the interpretation of the work.

In September 2011, Portal will present a series of internationally-networked performances by artists utilizing social media platforms such as Twitter and Skype as both a subject matter and medium in its own right. These online performances can be experienced in Sydney and New York, through satellite events connecting audiences to this new work, reflexively readdressing the idea of real-time presence and audience participation within performance art.

By presenting all artwork and critical content via online/offline platforms, Portal asks the viewer/reader to reconsider models and trends for "publishing" and how examples of instant publishing such as blogging and social media impact the documentation and subsequent historicisation of artists practices.

Published in Das Superpaper, Sydney, August, 2011.



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