Depicting something without directly representing it is the greatest challenge in abstraction. But it is where all the treasure resides.
We have represented everything we can see in every possible way. Representation can only be satisfying for the artist. It can no longer speak for beauty.
The only thing left to represent with paint are the aesthetics that AI and future screens have yet to show us.
If you notice, the contemporary trend is to represent through paint what was only possible through digital interfaces. Pixels, LEDs, glitches. This is not as much a breakthrough for hyperrealism as it is meatless innovational scraps tossed to the technically dependent to torture into representation.
Ideas, like “the end of an empire”, are groundbreaking feasts for conceptual painting as well as a wellspring of fresh content for the non-picture painter.
What does end-stage capitalism look like? What does Anarchism look like? What does the world look like without beating it into the viewer’s eyes and insulting their intelligence with repackaged figures? Does a new gimmick of style really show us something different when it is still playing within the bounds of representation?
Ultraviolence, chimeric nemeses, infant religions unaware of their religiosity, holy war, resistance, illegalism, iconic iconoclasm.
There is so much beauty has yet to be in this world.