Studio Talks: Thinking Through Painting

Thinking Through Painting is an on-going investigation of contemporary painting since 2009 involving numerous discussions and studio visits. The book was initiated after a discussion between the Swedish artist Jan Rydén and the curator Jonatan Habib Engqvist about how the contemporary institutional and theoretical art scene often seems to be uneasy, and at times even lost in its relationship to painting. Together with the artists Kristina Bength and Sigrid Sandström, they embarked on a project that investigates painting as a way of thinking with a group composed of a curator/philosopher and three theoretically minded painters who all have different points of departure and dissimilar painting practices. Taking the artist’s perspective as a point of departure, the book collects over 400 pages of commissioned texts and transcribed conversations between artists, theorists, curators and critics active in Stockholm, Oslo and New York. By exploring relationships between concept-based language and an embodied form of thinking through material and perception particular to painting, this book attempts to address the discourse surrounding painting and contemporary art.