What is painting today? The answers to that question are as varied and wide ranging as contemporary art practice. It will come as no surprise to anyone that painting is no longer bound by the traditional categories of abstraction, figuration, portraiture, or landscape, or even by its conventional definition as paint on canvas. The philosophy of painting today is found not only in traditional modes, but also in non-traditional realms. Artists have expanded the definition of painting to include photography, sculpture, performance, and some have even taken it back to paint applied directly to a wall – both inside and outdoors. Abstraction is no longer the purely reductive act popularized by modernism but now alludes to everything from typography to science; an explosion of cartoon iconography or a blurring of geometry with flatness of the picture plane. Figuration takes on many forms, from unsettling, strange, fantastical portraits to photographically influenced realist painting. In fact, it now seems odd to refer to work as "abstract" or "representational" when these distinctions have blurred, and the crossover between the two is so fertile.

Over the last four decades, the act of painting has been challenged, attacked, subverted, and dismissed as dead. Has painting ever really gone anywhere? In galleries and art schools all over the world, painting has always been and continues to be produced and shown. Collectors covet it and critics bash it; people line up at museums to look at it. Notwithstanding its near death experience with Minimal and Conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the practice of painting is alive and healthy.

Presenting twenty-four artists, whose diversified styles both celebrate and challenge the tradition of painterly practice, this exhibition testifies to the sheer vitality of painting today and examines the multiple permutations of contemporary painting - both on and off the wall. While contributing to the medium’s continued relevance in this new century, these artists have adapted painting for their personal use, taking from it what they need to create uncompromising works with the ability to speak of essential truths to a vast and complex audience. Some of the artists presented here produce exquisitely rendered private worlds in the time honored convention of oil on canvas; some use painting as a conceptual tool, questioning the role of painting; the work of others spills over into architecture, challenging or transforming it; still others view painting as ritual by placing their work in public and calling on the viewer to participate. Having cut themselves free of the frame, but still totally unreservedly able to return to it, the artists in this exhibition are making no secret of painting’s hybrid character, mingling methods derived from tradition with the most recent image production techniques.

Numerous art historians, critics and theorists continue to mourn the death of painting, yet somehow the medium continues to percolate. This supposed death springs in part from the mistaken notion that each new art movement or technology renders earlier ones obsolete – that innovative technologies and new media will overtake the traditional. Just as in the 19th century, when many people believed that photography would lead to the end of painting, many members of today's art world have become convinced that digital technology will endanger and eventually overwhelm painting. The medium has simply evolved and changed in reaction to photography and it has done the same in regards to the Internet and digital technologies. Artists understand that they could create their imagery entirely on the computer, but they still desire the visual, tactile and emotional effects they can achieve by sticking with the old-fashioned technology of brushes and paint. As one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented, painting offers the most effective ways to examine, alter, or invent a new reality-- the artists in this exhibition have done all of those things and more.

"On and Off the Wall: New York Foundation for the Arts' Painting Fellows" is made possible by the major support of the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Sponsorship is also provided by TimeOut New York. Additional funding is received from Susan Ball. This exhibit is presented through the generous partnership with Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg.