“Painting Forever” is a special edition of KALEIDOSCOPE entirely dedicated to the past, present and future of the medium. The most persistent of art forms — one that was once given up for dead, then revived and is now more alive than ever — painting has been at the core of an intense research process that we undertook in collaboration with writers, curators and artists of different origins, beliefs and generations, all of whom share a desire to examine its history and envision its forthcoming possibilities. The questions we asked, and asked ourselves, were: Which artists are practicing painting in a relevant way today? Which conceptual and formal strategies, which modes of presentation and diffusion, do they deploy? And, ultimately, why? What are contemporary painters’ motives, references and perspectives? This issue is the tentative answer, and one which will hopefully foster further debate.

HIGHLIGHTS
In the opening section we introduce you to the work of five emerging artists: Oscar Murillo, Ryan Sullivan, Allison Katz, Jonathan Binet and Tala Madani. All born in the 1980s in different parts of the world, they’ve chosen to explore, revisit, celebrate and challenge the idea and practice of painting, with a common spirit of engagement and varying degrees of irony and irreverence.

MAIN THEME
This section, on the other hand, consists of extensive conversations with four artists born between the late 1950s and the early 1960s — Heimo Zoberning, John Currin, Amy Sillman and Michael Krebber — who represent divergent yet equally prominent and visionary approaches to the medium. Their common ground most revealingly lies in the influence they exert on a younger generation of artists. Accordingly, it’s no surprise that three of them hold teaching positions at eminent art schools, including the Academy of Fine Arts in Wien, Columbia University in New York and the Städelschule in Frankfurt.

MONO
This issue is likewise devoted to a painter, Los Angeles-based artist Dianna Molzan, whose practice occupies the liminal space between two-and three-dimensionality, between “pictures” and “objects,” and whose works convey a sophisticated research on abstraction encompassing elements drawn from the history of painting, as well as from design, fashion and visual culture at large.

REGULARS
This section features the work of NY–based artist Nikolas Gambaroff and of Italian conceptualist Giorgio Griffa, alongside discussions with the director of a prestigious foundation dedicated to the legacy of Pablo Picasso and the curators of an ambitious group exhibition, “Painter Painter,” soon to open at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

INSERTS
Finally, this issue is enriched with commissioned inserts by three exciting young artists — Marieta Chirulescu, Fredrik Værslev and Keegan McHargue — that have each contributed a unique and affecting visual take on the making and experiencing of painting today.