Nothing to Paint (After Joseph Kosuth) (Detail)

Detail of Annie Cabigting's Nothing to Paint (After Joseph Kosuth) in the exhibition I Have Nothing to Paint and I'm Painting It, curated by Roberto Chabet and Nilo Ilarde at Mo_space from 6 August - 16 September 2007.

Excerpt from the exhibition notes by Carina Evangelista:
''I Have Nothing to Paint and I'm Painting It,' so flaunt the 40 artists in the inaugural exhibition of Mo_space. In visual grammar that garbles and with content that confounds. Lackadaisical it sounds but complex in fact. It's the visual analog to John Cage's 'I have nothing to say and I'm saying it.' It's explaining that nothing needs to be explained. It's smug and it's insecure. It's been belligerent and it's diligent. It's matter-of-fact that it's labor and it's love. Reductive, explosive, blatant, elusive, evolving, stubborn. There, then, here, now.

'Painting is dead,' Paul Delaroche declared after seeing the first daguerrotype photo. A preeminent history painter of his time. Delaroche is remembered less for his paintings than for this one quip that is also now the most embarrassing obituary proven premature by the defiant survival and glorious triumph of painting as a vital form of creative expression. Painting as painting, painting about painting, painting despite painting, painting with painting, painting without painting, painting for painting, painting against painting, painting in place of painting, painting in homage to painting. Reformulated, redefined, or insistently retrograde, it remains that painting is that perpetually powerful muse: exquisitely extant; not extinct. She'll never starve is she feeds the lotus-eaters whose stupor is manic rather than idle. She can't die because she's the femme fatale.'

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Online

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Publication/Creation date

2007

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimension

152cm x 175cm

Content type

artwork documentation

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Nothing to Paint (After Joseph Kosuth) (Detail)