Alexander Forbes' Berlin Art Brief

Entering “Meanwhile,” Nathan Hylden’s third solo show with Johann Koenig (through April 13), one might think they forgot to hang up the work. All eight of the L.A. based artist’s paintings are confined to a single wall on the gallery’s right. On each successive aluminum-based painting, the shadows of a plant and stool move further and further to the right, suggesting temporal change. Due to their apparent setting in a studio it is as if they are documents of process rather than process itself. The result is a post-modern riddle of sorts: if the artwork is only a document of its own creation, and recording of process for the pure sake of having a process, does the artwork itself need to exist at all? Considering the response to this new series — bot the Whitney and the Stedelijk Museum have purchased a piece out of the show — the answer is resoundingly yes. Alexander Forbes spoke with Hylden about this self-reflexive tendency, making arbitrary paintings, and the studio as subject. (more…)