Lehmann Maupin would like to announce Fresh Paint, an invitational exhibition presenting the work of five painters: Steven Black, David Deutsch, Angela Dufresne, Christian Hellmich, Fabien Rigobert. This exhibition is the first time many of these artists have exhibited in a New York gallery, and many have made works exclusively for this show. Each of the painters in "Fresh Paint" reduces or exaggerates architectural space, depicting contrived interiors or exteriors. Some of these settings are fictionalized, others completely devoid of narrative. They are, in effect, non-space and the "every-place" at the same time.
Steven Black paints his subjects from still life. His friends read epic stories to him while he painstakingly paints their portrait over the course of months. Black paints the body heavily and intricately, while completely reducing the background space to almost nothing, with little relation to the figure. Instead, only a shadow of space remains. The panoramic landscapes of David Deutsch maintain a near surveillance quality achieved through Deutsch's removed perspective. Painted from an aerial or side view in order to distance the viewer, Deutsch's paintings create a visual paradox, appearing inhabited and abandoned, inviting and foreboding all at once. Angela Dufresne paints places that are familiar and foreign at the same time. She creates fictional tableaus with her titles whereby the viewer is invited into a world where different narratives collide. Her work is currently on view at "Greater New York" at P.S. 1. The buildings of Christian Hellmich are simply exteriors in space, buildings that are strictly anonymous. There is no presence of a functional purpose or human experience in these paintings. For Hellmich, painting becomes an exercise in taxonomy rather than story telling. Fabien Rigobert's inclusion in "Fresh Paint" demonstrates his approach to video "as painting". In the single-channel video "Topanga Ground" he creates a contrived living space outdoors, treating this natural surrounding as an improvised interior, wherein his subjects move about freely.