Left to right: Justin de Verteuil, Anthony Cudahy, Alexandre Pépin, and Magalie Guérin speak at the 'Painters on Panel' event at Esker on Saturday January, 24, 2025. Photo by Wayne To.PAINTERS ON PLAYLIST
On Saturday, January 24, 2025, artists Anthony Cudahy, Justin de Verteuil, Magalie Guérin, and Alexandre Pépin came together to discuss their processes, references, and influences. The panel was moderated by Esker Curators Elizabeth Diggon and Shauna Thompson.
In a world of constant notifications, social media connection, doomscrolling, and pervasive AI intervention – that is to say, the practical and relational networks that are producing in us a sense of overarching estrangement from the tangible and present – it is remarkable that painting, in its stubborn rootedness in material and process, persists (or perhaps insists?) with such importance and global presence. While periodically dismissed in art criticism as irrelevant, the vitality, urgency, and resonance of contemporary painting endures.
Painting asks for material engagement, slow looking, and a willingness to dwell in ambiguity. It is tactile, intimate, composed of gestures – quick and slow, instinctive and considered. In contrast to the speed and saturation of our hyper-digitized and hyper-connected lives, and in spite of a voracious hunger for novelty, immediacy, and spectacle, painting offers a counterpoint: a space for nuance that our culture rarely grants.
In winter 2026, Esker Foundation presented four solo exhibitions by painters who each locate fleeting instances of connection, tenderness, or desire amidst the everyday, and give visual form to the ambiguity of intimate relationships. Reveling in uncertainty and complexity, these painters offer a resistance against clear narratives and over-definition, often creating works that hover in the space between figuration and abstraction. Each artist explores what is seen, what resists being seen, what is present – but that which we often overlook. These exhibitions ask us to linger, perhaps caught by a detail: the drag of a brush, the unexpected texture of material, the meeting of two colours, or the shift of a surface in changing light.
This iteration of Esker Foundation’s Permanent Collection pays tribute to painting’s demand for slowness, process, and contemplation by returning to the space of the studio. “Painters on Playlist” is a compilation of songs selected by Anthony Cudahy, Justin de Verteuil, Magalie Guérin, and Alexandre Pépin as a sample of what each painter listens to while making work.
ANTHONY CUDAHY
Thank You for Hearing Me – Sinéad O’Connor
I Sing Just to Know I’m Alive – Nina Simone
Revelations – Yoko Ono ft. Cat Power
NOT TODAY – Kim Gordon
Dopamine (Jamie XX remix) – Robyn
Me & Angel – Perfume Genius
idea 1 – Kelela
Awake – Smoke
Goose Eggs – Joanna Newsom
Why Feel Alone? – Diane Cluck
JUSTIN DE VERTEUIL
Vitamin C – Can
Heartbreakerei – Fuffifufzich
Côte d’Azur – Hall & Rauch
keeping up (live 6/24/84) – Arthur Russell
Spacer Woman – Charlie
Computer Liebe – Kraftwerk
Mumbly-peg – Pneumatic Tubes
Orban Eq Trx 4 – Aphex Twin
Daydream – Fishmans
MAGALIE GUÉRIN
Poison Lips – Vitalic
Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
I Follow Rivers (The Magician Remix) – Lykke Li
Pass this On – The Knife
Blind – Hercules & Love Affair
Kandy – Fever Ray
Love is a Stranger – Eurythmics
What is Love – Deee-Lite
Dancing on my Own – Robyn
Cheap Thrills (feat Sean Paul) – Sia
ALEXANDRE PÉPIN
11e – h hunt
Prickly Pear – Portico Quartet
Into the Light – Marisa Anderson
Birds – Electrelane
I’m Gonna Say Seven – Alabaster DePlume
De Cara a la Pared – Lhasa De Sela
Opium – Daniel Bélanger
Arte – Monolake
Cherry Blossom – Susumu Yokota
Central Park West – Elijah Fox
Anthony Cudahy: metronome yawned
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Justin de Verteuil: sie will / muse. zur marionette
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Magalie Guérin: Orange to Rattle
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