A Passage of Force Through Matter: Current Painting at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Arlington, VA

Featured artists: Tom Bunnell, Asha Elana Casey, Claudia "Aziza" Gibson-Hunter, Matthew Mann, Maggie Michael, and Marisa Rasum

February 14 - May 25, 2025
Art After Hours (Opening Reception): Saturday, February 22, 5pm-8pm

Artist Talk: May 10, 2025 at 3pm

A Passage of Force Through Matter asserts the ongoing vibrancy of painting within contemporary art and considers the role it can play in navigating and destabilizing our overburdened image landscape. Featuring work in both abstract and representational modes, the exhibition considers abstraction as a method of working, rather than as a descriptor to be assigned to an individual artwork. It frames abstraction as an approach that artists use to reconcile and transcend their own experiences of the visual world–both the physical world and the endless scroll of news images, selfies, digitally-generated content, and, increasingly, AI generated material that fill our various screens. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from art historian David Joselit, who described the painterly mark as “a passage of force through matter” in his essay for the 2016 exhibition Painting 2.0.