As the end of the 20th century begins dominating our horizon, and all our thinking and dreams point toward the impending closure of an age, many art world institutions and individuals have vigorously speculated about what art is vital, what will remain vital, what the next century might find useful, and what best characterizes this century. The question is not about stasis, about finding the right niche for an eminent work of art, be it painting or literature. It is not even about whether or not our heirs will read the dark enigmatic fables of Franz Kafka or look at the gracefully exultant paintings of Kasimir Malevich. Rather, more than how and why particular works embody the time in which they were made, the critical question asks that each work possess a telling feature, that is, something specifically telling about that age or moment in time. It is the very powerful telling nature of the works in this exhibition that gives them their potency and compelling presence. This inherent capaciuty for telling goes far beyond the anecdotal and both defines and inhabits a realm where decay, disorder, and death are no longer so threatening, and where the elusive and frightening mysteries of an invisible world become urgent subjects of an ambitious quest for the real. It could be said that what is true for all the artists in this exhibition is their commitment to live within a world where the instant can be transformed into the eternal, and that they all express the belief that it is possible for them to discover and define a place where time doesn't stand still so much as welcomes us home.

Having said this, one returns to a basic question: What do these works of art tell us about the nature of human existence during a century of wars, madness, and despair, about what it was like to be alive at a time when both small hopes and immense hopelessness fillled the air? In the realm of painting, more so than sculpture, this question changes slightly: What do the immediacy of sensations and perceptions embodied in a particular painter's work tell us about the nature of human existence, about living in a finite world? but beyond whether the artist's primary vehicle is painting or sculpture, abstraction or fituration, the question these resolute individuals confront is their relationsihp to time's passing, to the fact that for all the power of their imagination and will, they remain individuals caught within the web of change and inevitability.