JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES in: The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Nov 09, 2024 – Mar 23, 2025

This international and intergenerational group exhibition presents the work of more than 40 artists who have redefined painting using emerging technologies, imaging techniques, and their own bodies. Examining the impact that computers, cameras, and television, as well as social media and automation, have had on the medium, The Living End positions painting itself as a manual “technology” that has shifted further away from the immediacy of the artist’s hand over the past 50 years. The subsequent conceptual shift has led artists to challenge what constitutes a painting, how they are produced, and who (or what) can be considered a painter.

Employing a range of mediums beyond painting, such as video, sculpture, installation, and performance, the featured artists subvert longstanding traditions and mythologies of painting—and the notion of the painter as singular genius—to offer a vital portrait of a medium that is still being reinvented.

The Living End is curated by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, with Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator.

For more information, please visit The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's website.