When form becomes content, when painting is about painting, distinct material specificities start to matter less and less. Marks and words are meant only to stir some general, formal affect; they do not cavort with our surprisingly emotional responses to the peculiarities of the material world by trying to represent it. Every slick plastic surface will only reflect us back at ourselves, promising a superficial agency in completing the image yet impenetrably rebounding any attempt at interpretation. These formalist paintings, hermetically obsessed with themselves, duly mirror our own narcissistic fantasies. They leave us abandoned, safe in the inertia of our own company, transfixed by our reflection in a petrifying pool of resin.
–Colm Guo-lin Peare, ‘Dale Frank’, Vitamin P4: New Perspectives in Painting, Phaidon Press Limited, 2026.
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