The Return of the Horse

Slought Foundation is pleased to announce "The Return of the Horse," an exhibition about the contemporary crisis in representation, and the changing conditions that have made this crisis possible, on display in the galleries from November 14 to December 26, 2009. A few centuries ago, it was impossible to go from New York to Philadelphia without a good horse; likewise, it was impossible to document an event or display a person's featureswithout a good painting. Over time, painting and the horse underwent changes that distanced them from their original functions. Transportation today is no longer reliant upon horses, and contemporary art, in turn, has displaced painting from its position as the primary medium ofartistic expression.

This exhibition, curated by Osvaldo Romberg of the Slought Foundation, explores the return in contemporary art to a kind of figuration that was despised and rejected by the cultural vanguardism of the twentieth century. The artists featured in this exhibition interrogate the role of the public in their choice of imagery that can be seen as immediately pleasing or immediately disturbing. Here, the political, the sexual, and the epistemological meet through strategies of classical representation that question our assumptions about them. In so doing, Yigal Ozeri, Vincent Desiderio, and Natalie Frank, through a superb command of painterly techniques, present us with the possibility of an alternative to the contemporary domination of media in the domain of the visual. This exhibition is thus an exploration of potential futures for figurative painting, raising questions and positing partial answers.

The Return of the Horse
Or, Painting in the Ambivalent Present
Kurator: Osvaldo Romberg

Künstler: Yigal Ozeri, Vincent Desiderio, Natalie Frank