Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman speaks of painting as a physicality, like an extension of her arm. She believes honesty is the most important quality in a painting.

She uses richly complicated textures and colors (although with limited palettes). She uses gesture, color, and drawing-based procedures to imply femininity, performativity, and humor.

Albert Oehlen

Albert Oehlen

Piece, 2003, oil on canvas

Mirage of Steel, 2003, oil on canvas

Albert Oehlen's paintings are neither beautiful nor seductive. Their self-consciously brutal surfaces seem to be corrupted from within, a perversion of the paintings they might have been. Link to Saatchi Gallery. 

He combines aspects of figural sexuality, mechanical distance, and painterly abstraction. It is possible to find representations of objects or figures in his mostly-abstracted works, although he exposes the limitations of both.

Formally, puddles and washes convey a refracted, dreamlike sensibility. He plays with depth perception and foreground/background relationship. Some of his compositions seem rushed and crowded, while others seem discouragingly bare.

Other works not shown here are mixed media on panel, inkjet prints, and collaborative works with other artists.

Karin Davie

Karin Davie

In Out In Out #5 and #6 (diptych), 1992, oil on canvas

Slip-Up, 1998, oil on canvas

Karin Davie is known for her Modernist striped and looping hyperbolic abstractions. Her process can be viewed in context with painting as performance.

Her paintings are constructed from repetitive physical movements. She works in large scale with bright colors.  Line and color are strongly emphasized.

She has been linked to/compared to Pop art, Op art, and Abstract Expressionism.

Merlin Carpenter

Merlin Carpenter

from The Opening, 2009

Nigel, 2003

Merlin Carpenter uses a critical appropriation of painting strategies to challenge the history of late Modernism. He also challenges figure vs ground relationships with his disconnected backgrounds.
Some of his early work features abstract gestural figures - women standing in front of non representational backgrounds.
Actually his works vary quite a bit which makes his style hard to classify. (see huge variety in examples above) I am mostly interested in his most recent works like The Opening, in which he did all the "paintings" at the opening reception.

He is pretty involved in the DIY scene and started his own self-financing collective artist-run space in London.