Future Paint
Future Paint
Kelly-McKenna Gallery, 1308 3rd Avenue, Spring Lake, NJ 07762
Dates: April 11-May 19, 2024
Spring Lake, NJ – Future Paint: Nick Fudge, Charley Peters, and KOMPLY features the artworks of British-born artists Nick Fudge, Charley Peters, and KOMPLY, which explore the confluences of traditional painting methods and emerging trends in machine learning and creative technologies. The works meditate on the ever-evolving relationship between art and technology and open up new horizons in the contemporary painting landscape.
Through meticulous execution, the artists demonstrate their commitment to the legacy of traditional painting techniques while embracing the transformative potential of technology. In a society increasingly defined by technological advancements, Future Paint contemplates the nature of creativity in the digital era and reimagines new approaches to painting within the fast paced, screen-centric culture of the world today.
Nick Fudge
Nick Fudge's art traverses the complex intersections of postmodernism, meta-modernism, and the contemporary landscape shaped by A.I.-generated imagery and computational algorithms. His current painting practice reimagines postmodern tropes of appropriation and quotation from the 1980s, offering a twenty-first century response to the innovative spirit of modernist avant-garde movements. In a recent series, Fudge drew inspiration from Cubist works by Picasso and Braque. Beginning as near-exact replicas, these works undergo a process of recursive transformation, fusing past and future aesthetics. Through intricate geometric patterning, Fudge reflects on the artists' manipulation of space-time, interweaving multiple dimensions into his compositions. He also considers how the complexity of modernist time-space imagery has evolved in the context of A.I.-driven artistic creation. Through his artistic practice, Fudge aims to cultivate a philosophy of painting that transcends traditional boundaries. He views painting as a dynamic repository of ideas, languages, technologies, and temporal experiences, embodying the richness and complexity of artistic expression across generations.
Charley Peters
Charley Peters makes paintings where abstract language and digital experiences collide. Her work considers our relationship with painting in the contemporary world, seeing it as an expanded practice that is equally physical and virtual and not always limited to the surface of the canvas. Although essentially involved with the nature of the abstract, Peters’ paintings remind us of aspects of our real world, plotting a transition in our ways of seeing from the once-radical non-representation of high modernism to our current saturated vision of images experienced each day on screens through the internet, video games and creative technologies. In Future Paint, Peters is showing works from a series of paintings that have been developed through her conversations with A.I. about constructing a new form of abstract painting for today. The works combine the digital ‘imagination’ of the AI with the thoughts and material processes of the artist to create paintings seen through the lens of posthuman experience but embedded in the traditions of the studio.
KOMPLY KOMPLY is an artist making paintings on canvas and on walls in public spaces. He explores the legacy of eastern European Constructivism in relation to our contemporary lived experiences of Western life in the context of accelerating technological advances and mass communication. Interested in the use of computation to navigate intelligence, generate tactical strategies and control knowledge, KOMPLY has made a series of paintings on canvas for Future Paint in a muted palette reminiscent of military camouflage punctuated with hard edged geometric forms as ‘instructive text’. He cites the work of computer scientist Arthur Samuels as a source of inspiration for this work, fascinated by Samuel’s early developments in machine learning that led to him creating a self-learning A.I. program to play Checkers in 1959. KOMPLY’s work makes connections between the seemingly innocuous world of gaming, artificial intelligence and the real-world use of technology by the military.
In addition to a series of paintings made for the exhibition, the three artists will also present a collection of drawings, prints and other research material that will form a network of ideas around the digital realm as compelling territory for contemporary painting, many of which have never been shown publicly outside of the artists’ studios. Future Paint transcends the confines of traditional painting processes, offering a thought-provoking exploration of creativity in the digital age where the boundaries between human and machine blur, and the future of painting is revealed.
Exhibition Details:
Opening Date: April 11, 2024
Closing Date: May 19, 2024
For press inquiries, interview requests, or additional information, please contact:
Caitlin Kelly-McKenna, Gallery Director
Email: info@kellymckennagallery.com
