Artnet News revisits the trend of inventive, sculptural frames in contemporary painting, originally explored in Katie White's essay "Bordercore." The article features a podcast conversation between White and editor Ben Davis, examining how artists like Stephanie Temma Hier use frames as surreal, symbolic extensions of their work, moving beyond traditional containment to comment on and disrupt the artwork's boundaries.
This trend matters because it marks a shift away from the frameless, cerebral display of previous generations toward a haptic, bodily engagement with art. Artists are reclaiming the frame as a central creative element, partly as a rebuttal to the digital age's flatness, signaling a broader redefinition of painting's physical and conceptual limits in contemporary practice.