Painting 2.0 - Expression in the Information Age

Due to the rapid commercialisation of our lives through the mass media since the sixties, the ‘out-dated’ medium of painting has increasingly come under pressure. Often proclaimed dead, it has nonetheless succeeded in assimilating those very mechanisms that were predicted to cause its downfall: photography, the readymade pop culture, advertising, new media and digital technologies. Far beyond its technical definition – oil on canvas – painting has become the site where cultural techniques and conflicting media are explored and experimented with. A driving force behind this development was and still is the collision of subjective traces of painterly expression with the visual codes of the spectacle. The exhibition Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age will explore different chapters in the fascinating history of painting since the 1960s – continuing right up to the present day defined by social networks and the circulation of digital images.

‘Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age’ is a cooperation with mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien.