Kathryn McKinney reviews the exhibition Surfacing at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco, on view through August 30, 2013. The show features paintings by Matt Mignanelli, Dominic Paul Moore, and Russell Tyler.
McKinney writes that all three artists work "in a formal manner that takes an uncomplicated approach to the medium, with an emphasis on brushwork, color, and design… This mode of abstraction feels at home with a new wave of painters, identified on the East Coast as New Casualists, but really a larger concept and approach to painting that aims to for a balance of precision and off-handedness, the tension achieved when done right comes across as a punch line; less about the universality modern art was obsessed in achieving, but more of a democratized aesthetic content. It’s a refreshing turn from strong hold the conceptual has had on contemporary art for decades now."