Making Traces

MAKING TRACESat Tate Modern (Beyond Mark Rothko)

Questions to think about…What role does technology play in the production of an art work?

What does it mean to go to a museum?

What are you going to look at? What are you looking for?

What will you allow your experience to be?

What kind of attention do you bring to the experience of looking at a painting/work of art?

How is the experience of a work of art made different to that of an electronic screen experience?

Albert Oehlen, Loa 2007, Acrylic paint, oil paint, collage, ink on canvas. 170.2 x 310.2 x 4.1 cm

PAINTING AFTER TECHNOLOGYat Tate Modern

This display brings together a selection of paintings from the last decade or so, reflecting on the process of mark-making in a period of radical technological change.

Digital technology has transformed the ways in which images are created, copied, altered and distributed. Tools such as photocopiers and scanners, iPads and Photoshop have provided painters with a range of new possibilities. Rather than simply celebrating such technologies, however, the artists in this room are often interested in the errors, glitches and misregistrations that can result from them.

Painters today negotiate a world where the spread of advertising screens in public and private spaces, and the ubiquitous glow of hand-held communication devices, affects our sense of scale and our attention span. Accustomed to receiving information in the stacked windows on a computer or tablet screen, how might we appreciate the layers of materials on a painting?

Many of these artists are also concerned with working within or against the established traditions of abstraction. Abstract Expressionism was often associated with the heroic male painter, each brush-stroke supposedly a trace of his emotions. How might gestural painting be pursued when this narrative is distrusted? A number of women artists are asking new questions about the gesture. If gestures were usually assigned to an expressive artist, can a gesture be faked, or non-assignable? Artists also ask what other models of abstract painting can be retrieved, and look back over the history of painting to rediscover mark-making processes that may be associated with artists out of fashion.Many of the artists in this display know each other well, and the selection of work reflects one of the urgent conversations around painting today, mainly being pursued in New York, Los Angeles, and the Rhineland.Curated by Mark Godfrey

Painting After Technology - Tate Modern

Sigmar Polke, Albert Oehlen, Tomma Abts, Christopher Wool, Amy Sillman, Charline von Heyl, Laura Owens, Jacqueline Humphries.

Mark Godfrey works on exhibitions, acquisitions and displays. He has curated major exhibitions of work by American, German, British, Mexican and Italian artists, including Roni Horn a.k.a. Roni Horn (2009); Francis Alys: A Story of Deception (2010); Gerhard Richter: Panorama (2011); Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan (2012); Richard Hamilton(2014) and Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010 (2014). He has worked on many of the displays in the Energy and Process wing at Tate Modern and on displays of video installations by Omer Fast and Beryl Korot. Mark Godfrey has been involved in the acquisition of major works by European artists such as Gerhard Richter, Emilio Prini, Pino Pascali and Sigmar Polke and is the Curator for the North American Acquisitions Committee, a group of forty to fifty patrons helping Tate to acquire work by American and Canadian artists.

Mark Godfrey’s research concerns art post-1945. His PhD and book Abstraction and the Holocaust (2007) looked at the relationship between American abstraction and Holocaust memory, a subject he has pursued further in recent essays on the German artists Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke. Abstraction remains an area of research for Mark Godfrey, and current interests concern the arguments made around abstraction in the civil rights era and the relationship of contemporary abstract painting to changes in technology. Alongside this, Mark Godfrey is interested in debates surrounding photography, film and video after conceptual art. This has led to extensive writing and curatorial projects on and with artists such as Christopher Williams, R.H. Quaytman, Zoe Leonard, Francis Alÿs, James Welling, Simon Starling, Fischli & Weiss, Tacita Dean, Matthew Buckingham, Sharon Lockhart and Frances Stark.

Mark GodfreySenior Curator, International Art (Europe and Americas)

Mark GodfreySenior Curator, International Art (Europe and Americas)

Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke: Alibis at Tate Modern

TateShots: Sigmar Polke

MoMA exhibits; Sigmar Polke confuses; A critical look at a survey of Sigmar Polke

Albert OehlentheartVIEw – ALBERT OEHLEN at mumok

ALBERT OEHLEN: New Paintings at GagosianBeverly Hills

Turquoise Boy Albert OehlenAlbert Oehlen

Tomma AbtsTurner Prize Artist's Talk: Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts wins the Turner Prize

Tomma Abts- Gustav Mahler

Christopher WoolGuggenheim Christopher Wool Symposium -PTG: Abstraction since 1980The first 30 minutes is about Wool

Christopher Wool. Porto – Köln

Christopher Wool at Luhring Augustine, New York (May 2008)

Christopher Wool - Crosstown Crosstown, artist talk at DCA.flv *****

Amy SillmanSeminars with Artists: Amy Sillman - Colour As Material

Studio Visit: Amy Sillman

Art World Favorite Amy Sillman's First-Ever Retrospective At The ICA

Charline von HeylTateShots: Charline von Heyl at Tate Liverpool

Charline von Heyl: The Carefree Things (2014)

Charline Von Heyl - Now or Else

Laura OwensLaura Owens - 12 Paintings at 356 S. Mission Road - The Artist's Studio - MOCAtv

Laura Owens LA Studio Tour – YouTube

Laura Owens at Crown Point Press, 2011

UCLA Department of Art Lectures: Laura Owens*****

Wade GuytonWade Guyton, Untitled, 2008

Vlog: Wade Guyton OS

Wade Guyton Interview

A.P. Wade Guyton