Alex Hubbard, Charlemagne Palestine, Anthony Pearson, and Jon Pestoni
May 28 to June 20, 2009

The current exhibition at China Art Objects Galleries brings together the diverse practices of Alex Hubbard, Anthony Pearson, Charlemagne Palestine, and Jon Pestoni. The mode of operation for each artist is linked, not only through a conscious use of abstraction, but also in a more deliberate dialogue with the conventions of particular media. Each artist contaminates formalism with a mix match of ideas and emotions, updating the use of traditional mediums.

Alex Hubbard’s video, Heads in the Dark, blurs aspects of ‘the making of the work’ with the finished product. There is also the blurring of post- minimalism, scatter art, and contemporary painting, with contemporary cooking and craft T.V. Jon Pestoni’s oil on canvas paintings explore terrain that is neither figurative, nor purely abstract. In his work, overt repetition is subordinate to subtle shifts in scale, shape, and subject matter. Charlemagne Palestine’s work is both sculpture and painting. For a static work, its integration of music articulates a complex spatial dynamic. Anthony Pearson’s photographs incorporate handcrafted painting before they ever become the finished image. In a twist of sensibility, they then return to being unique by becoming editions of one.

Be it music, video, photography, painting, or sculpture, none of the works in the exhibition rely exclusively on direct art historical references. The works in the exhibition unabashedly seek out original formal terrain that is highly aware of historical precedent but not reliant on it. Palestine’s 1973 Dorian Sweep serves as an exemplary model of this kind of art making.