turned and turning still

EXHIBITION DATES: June 24 - July 19, 2025

RECEPTION: Thursday, june 26, 5 - 8 pm

Closing RECEPTION: Saturday, july 19, 4 - 6 pm

The Painting Center is pleased to present the exhibition Turned and Turning Still, curated by Kellie Lehr, Jamie Powell, and Lisa Petker Mintz. The exhibition will be on view from June 24 - July 19, 2025, and will be featured on Artsy. Turned and Turning Still invites work that embraces movement, change, and material experimentation. Making art is seldom a linear process; as artists, we simultaneously reflect on the past and envision the future, acting as catalysts for transformation through evolving techniques, shifting mediums, and the tension between the static and the shifting. Art creation is never still; it is stretched, pulled, layered, erased, and reimagined—an ongoing process of transformation. Image-making and image-breaking converge as artists construct and deconstruct visual or conceptual elements, exploring the emergence of new ideas and the disintegration of old ones.

This exhibition celebrates the dynamic nature of creative practice and the experimental spirit of materials, whether traditional or nontraditional. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who reshaped everyday objects into art that questioned permanence, and Yayoi Kusama, whose infinite repetitions challenge the boundaries between stasis and motion, exemplify this transformative spirit. Eva Hesse's fragile sculptures resist permanence, while Jasper Johns' layered surfaces carry the imprints of time. Julie Mehretu's dynamic use of layering suggests histories and geographies in flux and Oscar Muñoz's ephemeral portraits dissolve, challenging the idea of fixed identities. Sam Gilliam's free-flowing drips expand the painting into space, while El Anatsui's shimmering metal tapestries embody the tension between decay and regeneration. Turned and Turning Still invites work that honors transformation and material experimentation, exploring the act of becoming, where materials, techniques, and subjects are always in motion and always turning still.