GRIT Berlin - Painting Symposium

Description

An integral part of G.R.I.T. involved a series of contemporary painting dialogues and exchange at the Berlin Painting Symposium. The discursive platform aimed to understand and re-evaluate, via the evidence of the curated exhibition (of fourteen, EU painters) how painted gesture and its physicality engages both the maker and the viewer. Presenting inclusions:
Dr. Helen Gørrill (British writer/ artist, curator, feminist and art historian, lead in the field of painting’s gender equality) probed G.R.I.T.’s founding reference to art critic, Barry Schwabsky’s, The Observer Effect: On Contemporary Painting, that painting does not need to pitch figurative and abstract painting as opponent representations, that current painting embraces the body of both maker/ viewers. Gorrill highlighting, on gender and the "funambulism" of abstraction and figuration in contemporary painting.

Marguerite Nolan, (founder & editor of ever emerging-mag, presenting women artists over45, based between Amsterdam and Berlin) presented a short overview how contemporary painting is received in contrast via online, digital and promotional methods, “pixels and paint”.

Benjamin Rubloff (US, Berlin-based artist) whose paintings are based on found graffiti tags, shared his book, When I was there (2024), which explores gesture as an entry point for considering the experience of place and time in the city.
Concluding keynote, Jurriaan Benschop (Dutch writer/curator based in Syros, Greece and Berlin) talked about his book, Why Paintings Work (2023), asking why does this painting work; in what way does it have meaning? Considering both visual aspects and concepts, beliefs and motivations behind paintings.

All speakers’ presentations closed with Q&A with G.R.I.T. artists and (free-entry, attending) audience.

Emerged findings: a deepening of understanding the maker/receiver relational aesthetic and palpable experience of painting in real life. Defining the maker/ viewer reception of painting as a means to grasp social encounters and enhance societal impact, equality and welfare.

Period	10 Aug 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	Berlin, Germany, BerlinShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International