LONDON.- Beware Wet Paint is a two part project with one exhibition at the ICA and an interlinked exhibition starting a month later at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (FSRR) in Turin (29 October 2014 – 1 February 2015). Beware Wet Paint will propose a new path for painting, viewed here as a self-referential practice concerned more by its own memory than picturing the world or the artists' psyche. Korakrit Arunanondchai, Isabelle Cornaro, Jeff Elrod, Nikolas Gambaroff, Parker Ito, David Ostrowski, Pamela Rosenkranz, Ned Vena and Christopher Wool are confirmed in the ICA exhibition. Korakrit Arunanondchai, Isabelle Cornaro, Jeff Elrod, Nikolas Gambaroff, Isa Genzken, Nathan Hylden, Parker Ito, Oscar Murillo, David Ostrowski, Diogo Pimentão, Pamela Rosenkranz, Ned Vena and Christopher Wool are confirmed for the Turin exhibition. Like the ICA the FSRR supports the work of young artists and will enable a larger number of works to be exhibited. The exhibition coincides with a forthcoming Thames & Hudson publication entitled 100 Painters of Tomorrow which will be released at the time of the show.

Extract from introduction by Gregor Muir, Executive Director ICA, to 100 Painters of Tomorrow, Thames & Hudson, 2014.
“There are innumerable variants on how an artist arrives at a finished painting, including the processes by which he or she gets there. Aside from the physical technicalities, there is the context in which a painting is received, whether it be exhibited inside a ‘white cube’ gallery or an uptown restaurant, unveiled as a public or private commission, or hidden from view, as was once the case with Gustave Courbet’s L'Origine du Monde (1866). In the present day, paintings are made through so many differing approaches that to discuss the act of painting as a nebulous catch-all is no longer viable. To understand the art form in the present, and to understand the absolute value of painting within the broader context of contemporary art, we need to address how artists wish their work to be interpreted and how they choose to position themselves across a broad spectrum of possibilities within an ever expanding art world; a course set long before paint is applied to any surface Having accepted that interdisciplinary practice is intrinsic to our understanding of contemporary art, artists today will undoubtedly view painting as one of many mediums at their disposal. This option to resort to painting, in a far more relaxed manner than traditionally thought possible, represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between artists and painting - one that does away with the received orthodoxies surrounding how they might function together. This sea change, regarding how an artist arrives at painting, has played a significant role in breaking up established genres. In short, painting – as with most forms of creative practice in an age in which art is discussed in terms of theories such as Relational Aesthetics, Post-Net Aesthetics or Object-Orientated Ontology – is now fractured.”

The Italian contemporary art foundation Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo was officially set up in Turin in 1995 by contemporary art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Active since 1992 at a personal level in the promotion of young artists, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo saw in the creation of an arts foundation the opportunity to transform her passion into an “organised” activity able to collaborate more effectively with Italian and foreign institutions. The encounter with Francesco Bonami in 1995 gave rise to the Fondazione’s cultural programme, with Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo as President and Francesco Bonami as Artistic Director. Through working with the new generations of artists and art world professionals at an international level, the programme today presents an observatory on research and production of the most exciting avant-garde art. The Fondazione’s main aim is to encourage a greater understanding of contemporary art and of today’s leading trends at an international level. The vast field of visual arts – painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance – is analysed and presented to the public not only through their exhibition programme but also through an array of in depth educational activities and flanking events, such as conferences, talks led by artists, curators and critics from acclaimed Italian and foreign institutions as well as courses on contemporary art conducted by the country’s leading university professors.