by Vashti Ali

(...) At Wentrup, the attention shifts to painting, albeit after its end. A series of objects hung on the gallery walls recall painting (all in a shadow gap frame), and yet do not comfortably fit into the category. Discourse is philosophical here. What exactly is a painting? artist (also Berlin-based) Nevin Aladağ seems to ask. And what are its constituent elements? These works, or “vibrating images” (also the title of the exhibition), are surfaces, with blocks of painted color that call upon the modernist canon (Color Field painting and geometric abstraction, for example, or the paintings of Etel Adnan, perhaps), only they incorporate parts of musical instruments such as harp and piano strings, the surfaces of drums, and the mouthpieces of different woodwinds. They have been made to be activated, brought to life, and resonate within the space of the exhibition—a reverie that could shatter the shell of material contingency, and of the painting itself? Here I am reminded of the age-old Spatialist credo, “We want painting to come out of its shell.” If the expansion of the painting category is by no means uncharted territory, perhaps where this opening of the pictorial, the image, to the immateriality of sound takes on new significance is in terms of a staging of representation itself. Moreover, it underscores the interrelatedness, indeed, permeability, of differing forms or registers of representation. (...)