Painting in Present Tense

“Painting in Present Tense” by Chris Fernald examines the ways in which contemporary painting reflects our fraught relationship to time. The talk argues for painting’s relevance in an era whose speeds seem to outpace the “slowness” of the medium and our capacity to witness life itself. In a wide-ranging conversation that connected such seemingly disparate subjects as Russian Orthodox icons, zombies, online avatars, the surprisingly unresolved question of what constitutes human death, metaphysical examinations of the nature of time, and the importance of “sensing slowly” in a digital world, “Painting in Present Tense” explores artistic experience in an atemporal world. Discussion to follow.