Loren Munk

For all their formal ingenuity, Munk’s paintings, as demonstrated by the works in this exhibition, are personal meditations on art as a profoundly human and humane activity, elucidating the connections between art and history, art and society, and art and the mind. As Munk wrote in History by Exclusion, Illuminating the ‘Dark Matter’ of the Art World, a manifesto that accompanied his solo exhibition, We Are Our Own Art History, at Dam & Stuhltrager in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to be an artist is to “partake in the reception, exchange and generation of the energy which is manifest as art.”

In this regard, the two qualities that set these paintings apart, not simply as artworks but as insightful contributions to the very field they elucidate (and, to a considerable degree, satirize), is their specificity and encyclopedic range.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website