Leidy Churchman (*1979)

In the video Painting Treatments (2010), Leidy Churchman (*1979, lives in New York) makes, together with the artists MPA and Anna Rosen, painterly gestures on prostrate bodies. The actions are sometimes energetic, erotic and rough. The bodies are covered with such hard materials as wood or are completely naked and exposed to the paint splashing directly onto their skin. But occasionally the artists also proceed tenderly, applying the paint with great care, situating objects in precise arrangements or meticulously massaging materials into the bodies. In an article entitled “AbEx and Disco Balls” that appeared in Artforum in 2011, the painter Amy Sillman interpreted the work by Churchman as a kind of revival and reinterpretation of Abstract Expressionism (AbEx). While the reputation of AbEx is based on “deskilled rawness” and existential pathos, according to Sillman, the vocabulary of staining, spilling and physical action has always been a driving force for the development of contemporary and forward-looking painting practices. [...]

The now disreputable legacy of AbEx – its macho and bourgeois traits – has been eclipsed by seemingly unforeseen practices charged with homosexual and transsexual pathos, by collective expression and sensuality. Painting Treatments could also be associated with performance art, specifically with the richly material endeavours of the Viennese Actionists [...]. But Churchman’s approach is gentler, marked by a tangible and thoughtful need for closeness – and thus stands in sharp contrast to the frequently transgressive brutality of the Viennese Actionists. The actions depicted by Churchman may seem chaotic and disorganized, but they result in effective, memorable compositions. [...]

Source: https://www.stiftungkunsthallebern.ch/de/sammlung-churchman-a77-2.html (authors: Valérie Knoll, Geraldine Tedder, 2015)