What does it mean to embrace painting in the context of the global acceleration of image production? Can we do something to join, mediate, or even transform this collective gaze into something more productive than it often feels, or do we need to hold on to and treasure the private sphere of immediate experiences?
Painting Pictures refers simultaneously to the practice of using photographic source material, the painting of recognizable subject matter, and the point where the painting becomes a picture outside of its materiality.
Through object description, the student can learn how a work functions as a communication vehicle and how perception can become a world-building tool. We will look closely at the meanings behind basic, yet rich and complex painting concepts of figuration and representation. Rather than following a lecture format, the classes will be conversational. There will be ample time for studio work and individual consultations.
Information
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 1. – 13. 8. 22
- What to bring
- Art supplies of students' preferred medium
- Teaching language
- English
- Co-teacher
- Oliver Riedel
Francis Ruyter
Francis Ruyter was born in Washington DC (US) in 1968. He works with issues of style and recognition behind image-making and connects this activity to social and technological forces driving contemporary experience and historical archiving.
The work he is best known for takes the form of very recognisable painting strategy indexed to photographic sources, using smooth and flat application of unmodulated colour, restrained within a framework drawing consisting of uniformly applied black lines. While it is often described as a ‘signature style,’ he prefers to think of it as a representation of a medium, perhaps somewhere between painting and photography.
In 2008, he began replacing his own photographic source material with the Library of Congress’ FSA/OWI archive of depression-era photographs, conceptually locating ‘the archive’ as subject matter, in place of depicting images sourced from his own lived experience.
Collaborative work with other artists has always been a high priority and an essential part of Ruyter’s artistic practice. He currently lives in Vienna, where he has produced more than 30 exhibitions of other artists’ work since opening Galerie Lisa Ruyter there in 2003.
Website
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2020 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Vienna. 2018 Hurricane/Time/Image, FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3, Vienna. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Galeria Senda, Barcelona (ES). 2015 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Eleven Rivington, New York, NY (US). 2012 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, CONNERSMITH, Washington DC. 2012Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Alan Cristea Gallery, London
Group exhibitions
2020 God in reverse: When wisdom defies capture, The Richmond Art Galery, Richmond BC, CA (US). Spaces of no control, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY (US). 2018 History in the Making, Alan Cristea Gallery, London. 2017Publishing as an artistic toolbox, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna. 2013 Collezione Maramotti, Painting as a Radical Form, Reggio Emilia, Italy
