The Painting Center is pleased to announce the group exhibition Machine Learning, featuring New York City-based artists Henry Brown, Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsiao, and Douglas Melini, with a special project room installation by Michael Zahn. The exhibition is curated by Matthew Deleget, artist and co-founder of MINUS SPACE in Brooklyn, New York.

The title of the exhibition, Machine Learning, is inspired by a part of artificial intelligence concerned with the development of algorithms that allow computers to “learn”. Technologists working in machine learning essentially teach computers to recognize patterns within massive, seemingly unrelated sets of data.  Machine learning has a tremendous range of real-world applications, the most ubiquitous of which is the Internet search engine.

The exhibition Machine Learning examines the relationship between abstraction, painting, and the information age, and presents four artists making new forms of pattern-based painting. The exhibition raises multiple questions. First, how has abstraction responded to the irresistible siren call of the Internet? How has abstraction digested the appearance, logic, and behavior of the Internet? And finally, with every conceivable kind of information now available at the click of a mouse, what are contemporary abstract artists’ core concerns?

The exhibition originated at The Boyden Gallery, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, MD, in September 2007 and will later travel to Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX, in March 2008.  A color catalog will accompany the exhibition.

Machine Learning is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts. The exhibition, tour, and catalog are made possible by grants from the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Foundation, The Golden Rule Foundation, and Louise & Anne Abrons Foundation.

The Painting Center
The Painting Center is a non-profit, artist run gallery presenting vital, contemporary painting exhibitions. The gallery also presents regular panel discussions and events to promote a contemporary dialogue about painting.

The Painting Center exists to put forth painting in all its diversity and possibility: to celebrate its tireless force as a medium that expresses intellectual, emotional, and visceral sensibilities. It does not champion one school or tradition but instead welcomes and encourages all points of view regardless of their market appeal, their popularity, or lack thereof. The center is a gathering place for painters and those who love painting, and strives to be a democratic arena that offers a multiplicity of viewpoints.

The Painting Center continues to strive to present vital and contemporary exhibitions for painters, both for young, emerging artists and mature artists well along in their careers. Members have long been interested in promoting cultural exchange exhibitions with other countries.  Lecture series, readings, and other educational offerings are goals as well.

MINUS SPACE
Founded in 2003 by artists Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez, MINUS SPACE is a curatorial project based in Brooklyn, New York, presenting the most innovative reductive art by international artists working in all media.  Reductive art is generally characterized by its use of plainspoken materials, monochromatic or limited color, geometry and pattern, repetition and seriality, precise craftsmanship, and intellectual rigor.

MINUS SPACE presents four exhibitions annually in its Brooklyn project space, as well as an online log publishing comprehensive information about reductive art on the international level.MINUS SPACE also provides a directory of affiliated artists, publishes a comprehensive chronology of events concerning the development of reductive art, lists and links to related texts and exhibitions currently on view, and presents a comprehensive directory of links to related web sites.

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