A group exhibition with Sarah Braman, Ethan Cook, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Joe Fyfe, Lucas Knipscher, Larissa Lockshin and Claude Viallat, bringing together historical works from the ephemeral French Supports/Surfaces movement with several New York-based artists whose work is related to the concerns and methods of the movement.

The exhibition will present early and more recent works from Claude Viallat, one of the founders and probably the most well-known artist of the movement who experimented with the ’surface’ by using unstretched canvas, printed fabrics and other often commercial materials (rugs, scarves, tablecloths, upholstery fabrics, recycled materials, industrial tarpaulins etc). In addition a number of 1973 works from Daniel Dezeuze will be included, who questioned the ‘support’ or the wooden stretcher bar by showing synthetic meshes existing out of painted and cut gauze, hanging from the wall as delicate ladders.

The returning of art to its essentials, which is to say the two constituent elements of conventional painting, while keeping the emphasis on touch and the handmade, is something which has been prominently reappearing over the past few years. Many artists are underlining the physical or real above the conceptual properties of painting or any other type of artwork. In order to interrogate the painting as a form, some utilize traditionally domestic techniques like weaving and tapestry, while others improvise with the concept of the picture-as-object.