The Value of Gestures
My PhD aims to address the question of how the value of a gesture is determined in a painting. In my approach I have considered contemporary debates around paintings post-condition and its aggregate nature, as well as research into the value form of negative gestures of withdrawal. I have developed new bodies of work that aim to make visible the invisible procedures of labor in the production of painting and exhibition making (as the framing device of the painting). My PhD is developing a language around gesture that envisions it as fluid, and uses the philosophy around early cinema to determine where a gesture happens (between images). This PhD aims to expand the discussion of value around contemporary painting, focusing on how painting gestures are both a conduit for the movement of value to and from certain spaces in the contemporary art world, but also as a potential fluid conduit for outsider, radical positions which question the role of value distribution through terms such as ‘author’ and ‘genius’.
