envoy enterprises is pleased to present Forgotten in The Smile, a
group show curated by Matteo Callegari and featuring the work of Drew
Beattie, Joe Bradley, Matteo Callegari, Chris Martin, and Anton
Zolotov.

The openness of painting to accept and integrate contradictory
combinations of materiality and concept drives the work of the five
artists in this exhibition. After the divisions between various
stylistic labels in painting have largely collapsed (abstraction,
figuration, expressionism, conceptualism), these painters are
interested in a variety of hybrid approaches within individual
paintings or across the range of paintings made. Ongoing conventions
of the medium are embraced while being challenged by unconventional
means and methods aiming at perpetual renewal. The work is aggressive,
smart and irreverent. It comes from a restless and experimental studio
practice that courts a fine line with failure to find fresh, relevant
possibilities. There is a belief in the physical presence of the
painting, in its nakedness. The work exists in a peculiar zone, the
result of the interplay of removal and presence, clarity and
exaggeration.