New Image Painting, 2014; installation view, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago. Courtesy of the Artist and Shane Campbell Gallery.

The past two years have seen the sudden return of painting to the heart of contemporary art’s popular discourse. While most recent painting has drifted toward a formalist abstraction that offers almost nothing to talk or write about, that very emptiness has recently become notable, as the new demand for these young, meaningless abstractions continues to redefine huge segments of the contemporary art market. The term for this art is still being sorted out, but Walter Robinson’s “zombie formalism” seems to have stuck. Lucien Smith, Oscar Murillo, and Parker Ito are often invoked for condemnation, though it must be remembered that even these are the most interesting members of a very large group.

This is, no doubt, the “anemic abstraction and algorithm art” against which stands the brave New Image Painting, itself named after the confrontational exhibition in whose spirit it follows. In 1978, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened New Image Painting, a show intended to historicize a thread of abstract expression—explored most notably by Philip Guston—which used an imaginative play of simple signs or cartoons augmented by the expressive power of paint. Along with ‘Bad’ Painting at the New Museum that same year, the Whitney’s exhibition is remembered for opening a new front in painting’s struggle for a place in postmodern art.

John McAllister. Might Mingle Lusterlike, 2014; oil on canvas; 31 x 25 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Shane Campbell Gallery.

The radicalism of these two exhibitions can only be seen against the polished cool of contemporary art in the late 1970s, when the wildness of painting’s mid-century triumph had settled into a masculine, minimal, and conceptual fixed rhythm. By contrast, the artists in the Whitney’s New Image Painting and the New Museum’s ‘Bad’ Painting risked expression and claimed new territory in the surreal collage of imagery that had come to signify irrelevant painting. The works subverted the precise minimal and conceptual achievements expected from a work of art, refocusing attention instead on the visual fascination paint can offer to unremarkable subjects and implausible images. Many of these artists, like Susan Rothenberg and Julian Schnabel, would continue the practice through to the 21st century, making the Guston-esque play between abstraction and wonky depiction one of the few active threads of serious painting to survive today.

Openly inheriting this tradition, the artists in New Image Painting give an overall impression of light humor and serious use of paint, with simplistic pictures belying a complexity of composition and color. John McAllister’s Might Mingle Lusterlike (2014) smashes an entire color range into a narrow band of hot salmons and lilacs, giving a windowsill still life a psychedelic sheen. Nick Schutzenhofer’s series of untitled paintings from 2014 follow a common motif in the exhibition by relying heavily on line. His works on paper are ostensibly scenes of figures in landscape, though this linework and its all-over wandering discourage the squinting necessary to make out the action. Likewise, William J. Obrien’s drawn marks might warble into hands and faces, but their worth is in their balance, density, and free play.

Torey Thornton. You’re In, 2014; acrylic, spray paint, galvanized steel, and foamcore on wood panel; 24 x 18 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Shane Campbell Gallery.

The majority of the works in New Image Painting require a sense of humor to get past an initial hit of awkwardness, but when subjects are more clearly painted, such as in Henry Taylor’s Where Are my Brothers Keepers (2008) or Sean Landers’ Around the World Alone (Boy Skipper – Dawn) (2011), the jokes tend to fall flat. Mark Grotjan’s Untitled (TBC Flower Face 435) (2000) is an unquestionably lame painting, and Torey Thornton’s You’re In (2014) is worse. The scattered signs and winking un-seriousness of Friedrich Kunath remain as undeveloped as ever, and We Go Back Home to See Who We Were (2014) and A Chord that Cannot Resolve (Lexapro) (2008) both come across as unambitious in design rather than clever or mysterious. Ann Craven’s three nearly identical Bird with Pussy Willow paintings (all 2012) get a better laugh while also hinting at something more.

Highlights of the show include Jonas Wood’s M. S. F. Fish Pot #1 and M. S. F. Fish Pot #2 (both 2014), for their unusual rendering and re-rendering of a flower pot’s picture and pattern, and Tyson Reeder’s Canal St. (2012), which carves a single storefront scene into two different paintings yet deftly balances both. The small, quiet, and excellent figurative paintings by Lilly Ludlow, all untitled and from 2014, are a surprising nod to figuration in early modernism.

Lilly Ludlow. Untitled, 2014; acrylic on canvas; 8 x 10 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Shane Campbell Gallery.

I hesitate to praise or complain too much, however. As paintings, the works in New Image Painting are mostly okay, with an acceptable form of badness and, at worst, a level of visual annoyance that definitely won’t confront anyone on anything important. They’re nice paintings that look unusual in a familiar way, but it’s precisely this conventional rebellion that makes me question, or even resent, the way this exhibition is framed by its curators. As works of culture, the paintings in New Image Painting are a little thin—perhaps not as thin as the “zombie abstraction” works by Murillo or Ito, but hardly complex or ambitious in any cultural sense. I’d hate to think that the art world’s newly vocal frustration over vapid abstractions would devolve so quickly into competing aesthetics among blue-chip painters. Yes, we deserve better than rehashed formalism, but ultimately we deserve better than New Image Painting, too.

So while New Image Painting may not change much in the tastes of an art market that prefers its signifiers empty and flexible, the fact remains that the exhibition’s authors—its curators and, presumably, its artists—are taking the problems of the market seriously as a cultural force. That’s a good discussion to have, even in a show that doesn’t do much with it.

New Image Painting is on view at Shane Campbell Gallery through October 4, 2014.

'Condiments' (2013). Oil on canvas 78h x 60w in (198.12h x 152.4w cm). Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery.

Pestoni’s paintings bare a superficial resemblance to work by Gehard Richter. The vertical and horizontal movement of nearly canvas-wide brushstrokes in Pestoni’s work is an unmistakable nod to the German painter. These elements destroy and create with their very presence, much in the way Richter’s marks do. In works such as Condiments (2013), wide swaths of paint bury colorful under-paintings, only to get worked over by additional ribbons of bright color. The layering of paint seems to engage more than one palette; orange and magenta peak out of the bottom of the composition, but are obscured by a haze of cool white that occupies the majority of the image. High chroma red, orange, and yellow, and black are applied over the milky white cloud, setting up a tension between 80s-style neons and less saturated hues.

'Sea Legs' (2013). Oil on canvas 78h x 60w in (198.12h x 152.4w cm). Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery.

Unlike Richter’s technique – in which intuitive decisions are obscured by the chance results of dragging giant metal scraping tools across the canvas – Pestoni’s approach is calculated to garner a stratified effect without so much deference to luck. Painted layers appear to be built one on top of the other, combining optically by virtue of their translucency, but without violating the integrity of the next closest stratum. Sea Legs (2013) exemplifies this strategy of layering without mixing, acting as a record of the myriad brushstrokes and paint applications used to construct the image.

Richter’s work is an obvious point of departure, which Pestoni uses to move both forward and backward through history. The paintings look as though they could have been produced by an undiscovered Modernist from the 1950s. Drippy paint, autographic gesture, and color field abstraction are slapped together into an over-determined Greenbergian pastiche. Plumbing (2012) engages all of these elements. A large swath of plum purple paint floats Rothko-style over thin gestural bands of lime green and peachy stains of dripping paint, creating a palimpsest of Modernist strategies.

'Plumbing,' 2012. Oil on canvas 45h x 31w in (114.3h x 78.74w cm). Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery.

On the other hand, Pestoni’s commitment to form as subject matter is so utterly complete that it achieves a kind of post-Post-Modern energy, the kind of thing painting vomited up after it ate its own tail several times over. The artificiality of colors that sneak out from behind the more dominant layers of paint – like the hint of electric blue in Sea Legs (2013) or the day-glow orange in Buried Target (2012) – suggest a contemporary type of image that seeks to deconstruct painting through more painting. A similar sensibility can be found in the work of Odili Donald Odita, Amy Sillman, Jaya Howey, Alex Hubbard, Keltie Ferris, and other artists trying to piece together whatever vitality abstract painting still has after nearly a century of triumph and failure and more triumph and failure. The longer it stays around, the more nonobjective painting will have to say to everything that came before. I love history, but it would also be nice to see something new.

Installation view. Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery

The collection of works by Paul Cowan, Brendan Fowler, Chadwick Rantanen, and Dan Rees at Shane Campbell Gallery add up to an exhibition that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In his own way, each artist imbues an existing object and/or the space of the gallery with low-key but engaging creative intention. This makes for a surprisingly cohesive exhibition despite the fact that Cowan, Fowler, Rantanen, and Rees each have distinctly recognizable artistic styles.

This sense of cohesion stems in part from the artists’ use of prefabricated and manufactured objects. In a series of pieces titled Telescopic Pole (2012), Chadwick Rantanen has placed six aluminum and plastic poles throughout the gallery that span the distance between the floor and ceiling. In the middle of the space, Brendan Fowler built Summer 2012 Wall (2012), a seven and half foot tall T-shaped modular exhibition wall, part of which Paul Cowan has painted with a khaki shade of off-white latex paint scented with vetiver oil. On this wall hangs an orange-brown inkblot painting by Dan Rees titled Flesh Tint (2012). Rees’s paintings are arguably the most idiosyncratic works in the show, though his process – which involves applying paint to a canvas, then pressing the canvas against a surface within the space – eliminates a great deal of the artist’s personal touch. The companion piece to Rees’s Flesh Tint canvas can be found on the gallery door.

"Summer 2012 Wall," 2012, Brendan Fowler. Lumber, Drywall, Latex Paint. 90 x 48 x 4.25 in. / "Untitled," 2012, Paul Cowan. Vetiver Oil in Latex Paint On Wall. / "Flesh Tint," 2012, Dan Rees. Acrylic On Canvas, Imprint on Window. 15.75 x 11.81 in. Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery.

Each of these pieces also negotiates boundaries, both within the architectural limits of the gallery space and within more traditional definitions of artistic practice. Rantanen’s poles call attention to the verticality of the space and diffuse one’s attention to what’s going on above and below eye-level. The artist’s piece reminds us that, like so many old buildings in Chicago, Shane Campbell Gallery has a really beautifully molded ceiling, one that carries the unique history of the space. Fowler’s walls are at once architecture, a sculpture, an exhibition space, an object, and a subject, while Rees’s paintings are simultaneously performative site-specific installations and painterly objects that are tethered to the gallery space and the temporality of the show. By infusing traditional art objects with qualities inherent to practices like performance and architecture, the artists are blurring the distinctions between all of these modes of creation in order to create new and dynamic possibilities. Traditional definitions of what art can be become less and less meaningful as more artists around the world are creating work that straddles several different fences at once, pointing the way to a future in which art may become something else entirely.

"Untitled," 2012, Paul Cowan. Fishing Lures on Canvas. 75 x 56 in. / "Untitled," 2012, Paul Cowan. Cypress Oil in Latex Paint. / "Telescopic Pole (Drive Medical/Grey)," Chadwick Rantanen. Powdercoated Aluminum, Plastic, Walkerballs. 269 x 1.5 in. Courtesy of Shane Campbell Gallery.

And just as these artists are exploring new tendencies within contemporary art, the kinds of tendencies that will hopefully lead to new galaxies of creative possibility, they are also keeping with a certain trend in contemporary society that is increasingly post-human. I’m not arguing that the artists in the show are consciously espousing any specific agenda, but the work in the show does reflect a broader social fascination with the ways in which human consciousness has extended itself through technology and industrialization and outside of an embodied experience. This isn’t the type of art that meets viewers half way. I think highly of the show, so this is less a criticism and more of an observation. The use of sterile materials such as aluminum poles, fishing lures, latex paint, and drywall, and the impersonally manufactured quality of objects like monochromatic canvases and the free-standing wall lend an anonymous quality to the show. Looking around the gallery, I got a strong sense of arrangement and intentionality, but little sense of the reasoning behind that intentionality, like an archeologist confronting artifacts from an undiscovered society whose intelligence is clear, even if its purposes are not. What are we to make of the fishing lures in Cowan’s canvases or the walkerballs at the ends of Rantanen’s aluminum poles? It doesn’t seem as though they are meant to be fully understood, though their presence is provocative. They operate at a distance that does not lend itself to conventional understanding. As I mentioned above, I find that to be an interesting quality that makes me want to engage with the work further, even if the work itself may not feel the same way.

Paul Cowan, Brendan Fowler, Chadwick Rantanen, Dan Rees will be on view at Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago through August 25, 2012.