A Precedes B: Four Artists

Max Estenger George Hofmann Lorenza Panero Mike Zahn

The question posed by four artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and approaches to their art making practices is: how can painting remain viable in the current digital age where artists and viewers are inundated with reproduced digital images of every type and kind of art. This presentation includes new and recent artworks by each artist, all rooted in painting and offering an alternative to digital culture. The artist’s diverse aesthetics and methods of production present a path that recognizes the artist’s hand and beauty manifest in paintings and the experience of viewing. Relative to the exhibition title, a befitting subtitle could also be: Painting and Beauty Precedes Digital Technology.

Max Estenger’s approach to painting reveals and exposes every aspect of his artworks, including the construction and stretcher bars from the front of the painting as well as the hard-edge geometric shapes and pristine surfaces. There is no illusion or obfuscation, instead he reveres his materials and approach, thus celebrating the literalness and transparency.

George Hofmann’s artworks are painterly, celebrating both gesture and mark making. Rooted in color and feeling, Hofmann’s paintings are about experiences, conveying memories, sensations, moods and perceptions.

The artworks of Lorenza Panero are rooted in color and derived from painting. Her primary medium is light using luminography, a non-photographic process that produces unique color images—essentially a monotype using light instead of a press.

The new paintings by Mike Zahn are reductive and purely geometric yet, realist in that they depict an industrial shipping and receiving department with brown boxes on steel shelving surrounded by institutional walls painted light green. The paintings are full of subtle detail with areas of relief in the grounds while reading as flat with a Pop sensibility. The conceptual underpinning is that the images, while hand-made, are riffing off a purely digital, internet-based industry that has become familiar to one and all during the pandemic. Sort of an ironic twist given the basis for the presentation.