ABSTRAKTION.ORG / BLOG

Jorinde Voigt, drawings at Architectural Association, London

2012-02-13T16:08:00.000Z

Jorinde Voigt in ‘Artitecture’ at the Architectural Association, Bedford Square, London. A group exhibition and series of talks at the Architectural Association until 11^th Feb explore the relationship between art and architecture. Of particular interest to us at Abstraktion, is the work of the Berlin based artist, Jorinde Voigt, who employs line, symbols, text and colour to map events and data. The resulting works on paper are flowing, complex drawings, suggesting breakable codes.

Jorinde Voigt, '100 Views: Nächtliches Konzert (The Romance of the West Chamber; China, mid 19th Century) Countdown-Countup' Rotationsrichtung; Rotationsgeschwindigkeit/ Deklination; Umdrehungen/ Min, Woche, Quartal, Jahr, Berlin 2011, 114,5 x 185 cm, Farbiges Velin- & Ingrespapier, Beistift, Tinte auf Aquarellpapier, Unikat, Signiert (WV 2011-161)

Her work is reminiscent of the dense architectural mapping used to create an intermediary field for experimental ‘paper architecture’ at schools such as the Bartlett and the AA over the last 30 years. The rise to prominence of 3D computer modelling and rendering has somewhat substituted the use of an intricate drawing or map as an altered ground for architectural ideas in recent years. But the seductive quality of a well executed ‘event map’ remains.

Jorinde Voigt, '308 Views' works on paper, 2011

Although there has been a surprisingly limited crossover between this type of architectural representation and art, the work of Jorinde Voigt demonstrates that the ‘no mans land’ between the disciplines in fact provides fertile ground.

Guest Editor: Jason Daye

Abstraction in London, 'Means Without End', Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

2012-02-13T14:48:00.001Z

The last few days of an interesting show at Pippy Houldsworth, exploring abstraction in painting, entitled 'Means Without End' with the works of Ian Davenport, Daniel Sturgis, Mark Francis and DJ Simpson.

There is a talk: 'IN CONVERSATION - PAINTING' Richard Dyer with Mark Francis, Ian Davenport, DJ Simpson and Daniel Sturgis Wednesday 15 February 2012 6.30 pm drinks for 7 pm talk at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery here. This is a focused approach to abstraction, exploring systems, appetterns and a reductive approach.

Mark Francis, 'Duality' 2011, acrylic on canvas, 214 x 153 cm, 84.3 x 60.2 in, H4932

DJ Simpson, 'Isovist', 2011, powder coated aluminium, 125 x 250 x 0.1 cm, H4908

Ian Davenport, 'Puddle Painting (Yellow, Lime Green, Study)' 2010 , acrylic paint on aluminium mounted on aluminium panel, 103 x 158 cm, 40.6 x 62.2 in, H4923

Daniel Sturgis, 'Oscillate Mildly' 2011, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 70 cm

Jean Dubuffet, fascinating legacy @ Pace Gallery, New York

2012-02-13T13:25:00.000Z

An exhibition of Jean Dubuffet at Pace Gallery in New York can still teach us a few things about how to approach painting and abstraction. The Pace Gallery show: 'Jean Dubuffet: The Last Two Years' is on view at 510 West 25th Street to 10th March, 2012. Check out the Press Release pdf here.

Jean Dubuffet in his studio, c.1960's

“To see the last works, is to see all of Dubuffet, his theoriescontracted into an energetic force comprised of wild, fluid brushstrokes that appear as if they could escape from the confines of any boundaries imposed upon them.” Pace Curator, Harmony Murphy.

Dubuffet was one of the many diverse artists in Europe after WWII that championed 'other' art, that used, much like the Americans did through Abstract Expressionism, the idea of 'automatism' and Surrealism as a new approach to painting through Art Informel.

In 1983 Dubuffet unleashed an extended color palette across the canvas, removing the borders and a representational reference point. Nearly twenty works drawn from the final two bodies of work by the artist.

Jean Dubuffet 'Mele Moments' Acrylic and collage mounted on canvas, 1976
(c) The Pace Gallery

Dubbuffet was very significant in questioning how and why we look at art and painting in a formulaic way, he also champoined 'Outsider Art', checkout the Foundation Jean Dubuffet. He worked in abstraction as well as with a figurative, childlike motifs and often with a violent gestural mark-making, a broad legacy..

Jean Dubuffet 'Radieux météore' 1952

In a letter to the Pace dealer, Arne Glimcher, towards the end of his life, Dubuffet explained his conception for the painting:

'These paintings were intended to challenge the objective nature of being (être). The notion of being is presented here as relative rather than irrefutable: it is merely a projection of our minds, a whim of our thinking. The mind has the right to establish being wherever it cares to and for as long as it likes. There is no intrinsic difference between being and fantasy (fantasme); being is an attribute that the mind assigns to fantasy. One could apply the term ‘nihilism’ to this challenge of being, but it is reverse nihilism, since it confers the power of being on any fantasy whatsoever, given that being is a secretion of our minds. These paintings are an exercise for training the mind to deal with a being that it creates for itself rather than one imposed upon it.

The mind should get rid of the feeling that it alone must change while being cannot change; the mind will train itself to vary being rather than varying itself, the mind will train itself to move through a space in which being is variable and never anything but a hypothesis, the mind will practice using its ability to provide its own fulcrums wherever it wishes, it will learn to rely on illusion, to create the ground on which it walks. The mind will learn how to move through all the various degrees of being, and it will feel at ease when being is undependable, flicks on and off, remains potential, and sleeps or wakes at will. Being and thinking are one and the same.'

Jean Dubuffet 'Mire G 147 Kowloon' October 11 1983, acrylic on canvas-backed paper (c) Foundation Jean Dubuffet

'I have been painting for 40 years, I don't think it is good for my health.' Jean Dubuffet

Alberto Burri: 'Form and Matter', Estorick Collection, London

2012-02-06T10:30:00.000Z

A big 'Abstraktion Welcome' to our new guest editor, Jason Daye:

Alberto Burri 'Sacking and Red' Oil and sacking cloth,1954

Unbelievably this is the first retrospective exhibition in the UK of Alberto Burri, entitled 'Form and Matter' it's being held at the Estorick Collection in leafy Canonbury Square, North London until 7th April 2012.

A huge influence on the Arte Povera movement and aproponent of Art Informel, Burri is best known for incorporating foundmaterials such as hessian, charred wood, plastic and tar in his paintings ofthe early 1950s. This rich celebrationof texture was often juxtaposed with areas of vivid red pigment, thought to have been a responseto his experiences as a military physician during World War II. He also had a stronginfluence on British abstraction especially through arrtists such as Sandra Blow, see our earlier post.

He later developed a fascination with fissures, eitherin large cracked paintings he called Cretti,or in his Land Art Cretto over theearthquake-ravaged town of Gibellina.

Alburti Burri 'Red Plastic' Oil on canvas/mixed media, 1961

Burri’s work is essentially about the process of'making painting' as a work. If that sounds too dry, the consequence of his processis raw beauty. Visit Estorick to worship at the altar of iconic mid-century abstraction.

Abstract group show including Imi Knoebel at Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne, Germany

2012-02-01T14:11:00.001Z

Imi Knoebel, Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne

There is an interesting exhibition, until 17th March 2012, of diverse works at Galerie Christan Lethert. The sixth group show including paintings by all artists of the gallery taking place during the Cologne Contemporaries weekend. On the front wall of the last room is 'Weiss Schwarz' by Düsseldorf based artist Imi Knoebel. Contrary to his usually colourful acrylic works on aluminum, Knoebel here puts one white and one black triangle that together build a minimalist trapezium. (see below)

Imi Knoebel, Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne

Also take a gander at the other artists on show:

Joe Fyfe Rana Begum Kai Richter Katharina Sieverding Rana Begum Max Sudhues Jill Baroff's Jorinde Voigt Fergus Feehily Gereon Krebber's Daniel Lergon Joe Fyfe Nelleke Beltjens Lutz Fritsch

Imi Knoebel, Galerie Lethert, Cologne

Sol Le Witt, new Pace Gallery, Soho ,London

2012-01-26T11:09:00.002Z

Sol Le Witt, 'Wall Drawing 343,

The new Pace Gallery in London's, that opened its doors in late 2011 has created an installation of an iconic Sol Le Witt wall drawing. The work, 'Wall Drawing 343', was first completed in 1980 and has been installed in private/public collections worldwide, including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA). It will remain on permanent view at Pace London's Soho office. Abstraktion likes the Pace Gallery for its strong unending quality exhibitions of good modernists abstraction and hope its new UK gallery will continue this position..

For many Sol Le Witt isn't their 'cup of tea', for many he trivialized abstraction by breaking it down to just a formula. But we should look again at his contribution to the genre, as the Press Text states: 'he helped revolutionize the definition of art in the 1960s with his famous notion that "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art" ("Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, 1967). Regarded as one of the leading proponents of Minimalism and Conceptual art, LeWitt achieved a major breakthrough in 1968 when he began executing large-scale drawings directly on the wall, using predetermined line-making procedures and materials normally associated with drawing or commercial art techniques. Working directly on the surface of a wall allowed LeWitt to achieve his objective of reinforcing flatness and making a work as two-dimensional as possible.'

Richard Wright, 'The Stairwell Project', 2010, Acrylic on wall, Dimensions variable
Permanent commission, Dean Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

But I believe his work is still very relvant for the 21st Century, consider the work of Richard Wright at Gagosion Gallery who won the Turner Prize in the UK..see our post on him here back in 2009.

Jonathan Lasker @ Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France..

2012-01-24T11:42:00.000Z

Jonathan Lasker 'The Commerce of Dreams' 2011

A new exhibition of the work of Jonathan Lasker is taking place at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris until 2nd February 2012. |Lasker always produces interesting ideas about painting and abstraction in particular, here is the Gallery text:

'Lasker developes a formal language. He treats the canvas as a zone where strokes of paint are superposed atop one another in a way that is tangible. The marks, often an assemblage of primary or secondary colours, are distinguished one from another through Lasker's bright, intense, and sharply contrasting colour choices. The colours create fluidity or, conversely, pathways that embed themselves physically into the material, with paint building up along the edges. This sense of impasto, or of fluidity, gives the impression of very different temporalities that in turn shape the way the tableau is interpreted. Lasker's compositions are controlled and structured; they oscillate between intuition and analysis. Lasker seeks a pictorial system that justifies itself. He brings the viewer to the brink of instant reflex, identifying with the image represented.'

Jonathan Lasker 'Common Sense' 2010

I like th titles of his works, always optimistic, like 'The Boundary of Luck' and 'Evidence', 'Life Without Thought', and 'Illusions of the Self'. there is always a distance between the viewer and the painting that leaves a 'coldness' or slickness to his work. yet he has a great visceral quality to the surfaces.. a kind of 21st century Abstract Expressionism..

Alice Browne/James Ferris, Limoncello Gallery, London

2012-01-16T23:13:00.001Z

Alice Browne, 'Mammoth' oil on canvas, 2011

Limoncello is a funky East London, Hoxton actually, gallery with a roster of young artists, much of them exploring a loose, painterly abstraction in their work. Just as Alice Browne, who's work reminds me of Mali Morris and Roaul de Keyser, finishes her fascinating show of paintings, a painting show with a difference starts, see below..

James Ferris ’5050′ is comprised of 100 of the artist’s paintings made from 2008-2011. The paintings will be available to purchase by all, and will be sold for the amount of the order in which they are sold. The person first through the door at 6:30pm on the opening night can choose any painting and purchase it for £1, the second person to buy any painting will pay £2, up to the one hundredth person for £100. Upon purchase, the paintings will be deinstalled, titled, paid for, wrapped and taken there and then.

The order of play:

1) View the work

2) Ask a gallery assistant at the desk to remove your painting*

3) The painting will be titled

4) An invoice and artist certificate will be printed

5) The invoice will be settled by cash or cheque

6) The work will be wrapped and handed to the viewer

*Only one painting per person. Open until Saturday 25th February 2012 at Limoncello Gallery

James Ferris gained his degree, BA in Philosophy/Fine Art from Reading University (2003), his MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths, London (2009). He has a forthcoming solo and group exhibitions include dienstgebaeude, Zurich (2012); ‘My Brother is a Hairy Man’ and George Polke, London (2011); ‘Young British Art’, Limoncello, London (2011); and ‘Let’s Be Civil’, And/Or, London (2011). He was selected for the exhibition at Jerwood Contemporary Arts exhibition in 2010.

Blue chip abstraction, Charlene Von Heyl, Tate Liverpool, 2012

2012-01-12T18:15:00.001Z

Charline von Heyl

At last, an artist we have championed at Abstraktion for some time, Charline Von Heyl, gets the recognition of a big show in the UK at Tate Liverpool. She is a German artist, who came to prominance in the eighties, moved to New York in 1994, has three studios there (one of them in Marfa, Texas) and is, incidently, married to the artist Christopher Wool.

Charline von Heyl

Von Heyl has the experimental approach without relying on digital images that set her apart from many of todays painters, especially in the UK, where there is, in my view, a lazy predominance in the use of the internet that remains in the final work. That is not to say she hasn't and doesn't use such imagery, but she goes beyond it, working through it, masking, layering, distorting, destroying the imagery, then rebuilding it. Why von Heyl is good, is because of her distinct depth of her working processes, through both drawing and studio practice often reminiscent of both Oehlen and Richter, yet still retaining a lightness to her work, sometimes verging on figuration, but giving us a rich expanded field of the possibilities of abstract painting.

Charline von Heyl 'Pink Vendetta' 2009 Acrylic & Oil on linen, 82 x 72 inches

Tate Liverpool Press Text: 'Distinctive, imaginative and always surprising, Charline von Heyl’s work offers a fresh and exciting approach to the world of abstract art. Von Heyl is at the forefront of a new generation of abstract painters who have rejected late modernism’s emphasis on a singular signature style. Charline von Heyl at Tate Liverpool will be the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK. Featuring forty two of her large canvasses and a number of unique works on paper, the exhibition explores von Heyl’s work from 1990-2011.'

Charline von Heyl is organised in collaboration with Kunsthalle Nuremberg, where the exhibition will be displayed from 11 July – 30 September 2012. See a great monograph of her work here.

Damien Hirst, 'The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011' Gagosian Gallery, London

2012-01-09T11:15:00.001Z

DAMIEN HIRST, Levorphanol, 1995 Household gloss on canvas
27 x 27 inches (68.6 x 68.6 cm) © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2011

'I was always a colorist, I’ve always had a phenomenal love of color… I mean, I just move color around on its own. So that’s where the spot paintings came from—to create that structure to do those colors, and do nothing

I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of color.' Damien Hirst

Gagosian Gallery, 'The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011' of Damien Hirst at Britannia Street gallery, London and worldwide. Like him or loath him, you can't ignore him, he reminds me of a character that's part Stella and Warhol combined in a Frankenstein hybrid, competing with Jeff Koons for popularity, like a child on sugar, he can't stop himself carving out a place in the British art scene.

Here is the Press Text from the well oiled Gagosian Gallery:

'The exhibition will take place at once across all of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on January 12, 2012. Most of the paintings are being lent by private individuals and public institutions, more than 150 different lenders from twenty countries. Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011” makes use of this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to locality.

Included in the exhibition are more than 300 paintings, from the first spot on board that Hirst created in 1986; to the smallest spot painting comprising half a spot and measuring 1 x 1/2 inch (1996); to a monumental work comprising only four spots, each 60 inches in diameter; and up to the most recent spot painting completed in 2011 containing 25,781 spots that are each 1 millimeter in diameter, with no single color ever repeated.'

Tomory Dodge, Monica De Cardenas Gallery, St.Moritz, Switzerland, 2012

2012-01-05T11:09:00.001Z

Tomory Dodge, 'Caisson' Oil on canvas, 2011

If you haven't yet had the chance to see thework of the American artist Tomory Dodge, then now is the time, especially ifyou are planning a trip to St.Moritz, his work is currently being shown at the Monica De Cardenas Gallery until 4th Febuary 2012.

As I plan a last look at Gerhard Richter: Panorama at Tate Modern tomorrow, before it ends, there is a similarity to both these artists works. Dodge creates great paintings and is, essentially, an Abstract Expressionist at heart, perhaps, because he is from Colorado wecould refer to Jackson Pollock or Clyfford Still, for that large visceralexposure of the canvas to colour and gesture..As many of us attempt to push the boundaries of abstractionthrough painting, away from old Abstract Expressionist ideas, in a post-modern/post-theory attempt toadd some kind of newness to our work; there is something to be said for keepingit simple, don't worry aboutcontext and theory, just do, allow the painting to just be a painting..how you get there dosen't matter, how you respond to the work is what counts and I respond to these works very positively.

PressText:

'Tomory Dodge's canvases recall the sublime through an abstract and seductive use of color and movement. The compositional negotiation between beauty and destruction suggests the artist's preoccupation with catastrophe, rapture, transcendence, and rebirth. Looking at them feels like enjoying the calm before the storm.' Lauren O'Neill - Butler, Artforum 2008

Tomory Dodge, Installation view, (c) Monica De Cardenas Gallery

Abstract Possible: Symposium/exhibitions, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, January 2012

2012-01-03T10:57:00.002Z

Tensta Konsthall’s new program launches in 2012 with the exhibitions Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies and Bidoun Library on view beginning 12 January-22 April 2012

Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden

Doug Ashford, Claire Barclay, José León Cerrillo, Yto Barrada, Matias Faldbakken, Priscila Fernandes, Zachary Formwalt, Liam Gillick/Anton Vidokle, Goldin+Senneby, Wade Guyton, Iman Issa, Gunilla Klingberg, Dorit Margreiter, Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén, Mai-Thu Perret, Falke Pisano, Walid Raad, Emily Roysdon, Tommy Stöckel,

Tensta Konsthall: 12 January-22 April

Bukowskis: 27 January-12 February
Center for Fashion Studies, University of Stockholm: January 2012-December 2013

Press Text:

'Abstract Possible; The Stockholm Synergies explores three prominent tendencies in contemporary art which are followed, examined and problematized: formal abstraction, economic abstraction and “strategies of withdrawal.” Formal abstraction encompasses painting, sculpture, installations and video that reflect abstract languages, especially geometric abstraction, which often recalls the classic avant-garde’s development of a novel visual expression. Economic abstraction concerns art and economy, taking up the genuine abstract value of money. “Withdrawal” refers to the wave of artists’ initiatives during the last 15 years that have deliberately not joined what we can call the “mainstream” in order to create a greater degree of self-determination for the artists.

Incorrelation with Abstract Possible; The Stockholm Synergies, the reportContemporary Art and its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions andScenarios for the Future is published by Sternberg Press. The report is editedby Olav Velthuis and Maria Lind and includes contributions by StefanoBaia-Curioni, Karen van den Berg/Ursula Pasero, Isabelle Graw, Goldin+Senneby,Noah Horowitz, Suhail Malik/Andrea Phillips, Alain Quemin and Olav Velthuis.Design by Metahaven. A symposium on the occasion of the report’s release willtake place on Saturday 28.1. This report explores a number of interrelatedinstitutional developments in the last couple of decades, which have had asignificant impact on the way art is marketed and perceived by its audiences.For instance, the rise of the art fair, the internet and the increasedcompetition of auction houses on the contemporary market both reflect andfurther propel the globalization and commercialization of the art world; thelatter much to the dismay of numerous artists and critics who claim thatcommerce has an uneasy relationship with art production and perception.'

Tensta Konstall
Taxingegränd 10
163 64 Spanga
Schweden
fon +46 8 36 07 63
info@tenstakonsthall.se

John Chamberlain, American abstract sculptor and painter, dies..

2011-12-30T23:58:00.002Z

John Chamberlain 'Kora', metal, 1963 (c) Tate Modern

There'san interesting little obituary on the life of John Chamberlain in the theHuffpost, check it out here. Here is a great little bookwhere Chamberlain discusses his work with Hans Ulrich Obrist.They've got a couple of nice works at the Tate Modern,it may not be the MOMA, but hey, we Brits liked him too..

'The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction..', moves, 2012

2011-12-30T18:52:00.001Z

If you missed the big exhibition The Indiscipline of Painting: InternationalAbstraction from the 1960s to Now at Tate St.Ives,where an attempt to survey abstraction in postmodern times, then you have theopportunity to see it at the Mead Gallery at WarwickArt Centre from 14th January to 10th March. This was an interestingexhibition at Tate St.Ives and it was a big exhibition that relied on more thatjust pulling out some of the old paintings in the Tate storage facilities, butactually borrowing works from further afield.

Francis Baudevin print, for 'Indiscipline of Painting' (win a print here)

Hopefully it will give thefuture curators working at or with Tate St.Ives, the confidence to push formore interesting works and gain more support or funding to in creating apopular show and enticing art lovers down to the Cornish peninsula.

Though some of the work had alightness that I found frustrating when seeing the works in such a confinedspace, perhaps it says more about the 'postmodern' times than specific artistsapproach, there still remained a slickness and Minimalist aesthetic throughoutthat makes you feel that abstraction is just about decoration, I felt it wasn'thistorically accurate, there are none of the 'big British heavies', or any ofthe later works by the St.Ives artists like Heron, Scott, Barns-Graham etc,that held on to abstraction through the sixties and seventies and wererecognized more internationally than in Britain during this time, or any of thehard-edge painters in London at the time such as, Denny, Hoyland, or the later works of GillainAyres, Mali Morris etc. but some inclusions by artsist that have little to do with abstraction or have played a minimal part in its history. Still, it was an interesting show and worth seeing, and we bigged it up in a post back in October (see here).

Mali Morris, 'Plural on Red' 2002

Here's the press release: 'The Indiscipline of Painting' is an international group exhibitionincluding works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected byBritish painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languagesof abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have beenrevisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy ofabstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position ofabstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with amodernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led themedium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression.TheIndiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals howpainting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued toprovoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’sdecline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works byBritish, American and European artists made over the last five decades and featuresmajor new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol,Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser knownartists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.'

Thepainter and curator, Daniel Sturgis is presenting a lecture on the exhibitionon Tuesday 31st January in the Conference Room at 6.30 PM, click here for more details.

'Eye to Eye', Joseph Marioni, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, USA

2011-12-29T13:03:00.000Z

An often side-lined American abstract artist currently showing at The Phillips Collection is Joseph Marioni. The lush surfaces of his paintings explore the visceral quality of paint on canvas. He has a similarity to the Minimalist works of Brice Marden in the seventies, which the MOMA has a good collection of. He has had two interesting shows in 2011, namely at that great French exhibition space Espace de la Concret and BAM/PFA at University of California, Berkeley, entitled Abstract Now and Then, they also have an interesting exhibition in 2012 of Abstract Expressionism from their collection, click here for details. Worth checking out, exhibition ends on 29th January, 2012.

New abstract paintings of Carmen Herrera, Lisson Gallery, London in 2012

2011-12-28T14:23:00.000Z

An exhibition of the artist Carmen Herrara is taking place at the Lisson Gallery, London from 1st February - 3rd March 2012.

Carmen Herrera, 'Redwith White Triangle' (1961), Acrylic on canvas,

48 x 66 inches, PrivateCollection, New York, (This work is probably not going to be in the show)

I had the opportunity some years ago to visit the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba and see for myself the modernist paintings that echoed the major avant-garde movements taking place in Europe and America through the Twentieth Century. Even though the artists were cut off politically and culturally after the revolution, there was evidence of a rich engagement with their practice and an independent spirit and passion for painting.

Herrara, who was born in 1915, came out of that international experimental and Romantic ideal forged in the 1940's by many painters and shows an influence from Barnett Newman (listen to MOMA 'Vir Hiroicus Sublimis' multi-media description here) and Abstract Expressionism developed through her subsequent travels in America, where she settled in New York since 1954) and Europe (living in France for a while) and a unique and passionate response to abstraction through her reductive abstract paintings. Through time she refined her focus, playing with symmetry and asymmetry, flatness and depth, illusion and the physicality of painting. The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham held a large scale retrospective of her work in 2009. This new exhibition at Lisson should be a very exciting example of her recent developments.

Helen Frankenthaler, radical abstract painter..

2011-12-27T17:52:00.000Z

Helen Frankenthaler (c) ArtStory

Thanks, Peter for your post on the sad death of Helen Freankenthaler, she was the last of the Abstract Expressionists and a good friend of our John Hoyland. Her work, along with Joan Mitchell, has been redefined in recent years and we have a much greater understanding of their contribution to the lasting legacy of that great American abstract movement some sixty years ago. It was her revolutionary staining technique that Frankenthaler and her contemporaries Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, also known as 'Post Painterly Abstraction' shall be remembered for.

I first came across her when at art school during the presentation of the art documentary 'Painters Painting' by Emile de Antonio (see above, scoll along to 2:25). I was first struck by her elegance and articulate nature which is captured in this little clip from the fifties. This work below is her most renowned piece from 1952, which explores her staining technique.

Helen Frankenthaler, 'Mountains and Sea', oil on canvas, 1952

Helen Frankenthaler 1928 - 2011

2011-12-27T16:04:00.001Z

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-frankenthaler-helen.htmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/arts/helen-frankenthaler-abstract-painter-dies-at-83.html?_r=1http://en.wikipedia.org/I recently discovered that some friends of mine spent time with Helen Frankenthaler in New York and they described her as elegant, charming, witty and modest. This could be a description of her work and a suitable elegy.

Ellsworth Kelly at LACMA and new Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, USA

2011-12-26T17:00:00.004Z

A new retrospective exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly, the master of geometric and Minimalist abstraction, is to take place at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (BCAM, Level 2) from January 22 – April 22, 2012.

Ellsworth Kelly, Colors on a Grid, 1976, lithograph on 350-gram Arches 88 paper, 48 ¼ x 48 ¼ inches (122.6 x
122.6 cm), edition of 46, © Ellsworth Kelly and Tyler Graphics, Ltd.

From the press: 'Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings is the first retrospective examination of Kelly’s exceedingly prolific print practice since 1988. The exhibition includes over 100 prints, the majority from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, and five paintings. The exhibition is organized thematically in order to explore Kelly’s mastery of key formal motifs: grids, contrast and curves. In the words of catalogue raisonné author Richard Axsom, Kelly’s prints “exchange the totemic presence, the tangible physicality and public assertiveness of the paintings and sculptures for the qualities no less genuine in registering Kelly’s vision: intimacy, delicacy, and in nearly immaterial veils of shape and color, an unmatched ethereality.” '

There will also be an exhibition at the new Matthew Marks Gallery that represents him in Los Angeles to accompany the retrospective.

Victor Pasmore: From Construction to Spraypaint, New Art Centre, Wiltshire, England

2011-12-23T13:17:00.002Z

Installation view, Victor Pasmore, (c) New Art Centre

Victor Pasmore: From Constructions to Spraypaint. An often neglected British abstract artist of the the post-war years, Pasmore played a significant role in modernising British art education and was an influential teacher at Newcastle School of Art, with Richard Hamilton and Ian Stephenson. His late works are becoming more known and understood for their innovative use of spraypaint and the poetic use of line. This exhibition champions his last great abstract works that reflect his early interest in landscape and a very British sense of colour, also showing his three dimensional constructions. This exhibition is on until 12th January, also Roche Court Sculpture Park/New Art Centre is a unique and funky place to visit with much to offer the art lover on a cold Winter's day..

Installation view, Victor Pasmore, (c) New Art Centre

From Press Release: 'Victor Pasmore: From Constructions to Spray Paint, brings together key pieces from the most important decades of Pasmore's career. His constructed reliefs from the 1960s are amongst his most familiar geometric works in which Pasmore combined ideas of growth and harmony in three dimensions. These will be shown with essentially two-dimensional works combining fine lines and broader bands of colour. In later years, Pasmore returned to a more poetic style of painting, in which colour and organic forms dominated and his subsequent use of spray paint gave an immediate rhythm and movement, which replaced the rigour of his more static compositions.'

Peter Krauskopf, new abstract paintings at Walter Storms Galerie, Munich

2011-12-22T15:17:00.002Z

Exhibition installation at Walter Storms Gallery

We like the new paintings of Peter Krauskopfat WalterStorms Gallery, he develops a style of paintings that builds overtime, creating a surface of over-painting, the gallery states:'These are concretions of atime history: On homogeneous smooth surfaces which consisteither of polished, complex previously discarded images ormonochrome underpainting, Krauskopf takes a single imagemaking procedure. He pushes with a knife or abrush, a broad even coverage overan unprecedented imagination. Thus, a symbiosis occursbetween a picture of the past and its completion in thepresent.' These are exciting paintings moving abstraction on, yet acknowledgingthe developments of postmodern abstraction. There is a new monograph on theartist, Peter Krauskopf, 'Block', with texts by UlrichBischoff and Julia Franck.

Peter Krauskopf (born 1966) graduated in painting at theAcademy of Visual Arts in Leipzig in 1997 as a master class of Prof. Arno Rink. Since then his work in numerous institutional solo exhibitions were on display. Peter Krauskopf's work is represented in numerous public collections, including in the Print Room and the Galerie NeueMeister, Dresden, the Germanic National Museum, Nuremberg, Berlin Gallery and the Paul-Loebe House for members of the Bundestag, Berlin.

Peter Krauskopf, 'Haus' oil on canvas, 2011

Rachel Howard, 'Folie a Deux' abstractions at Blain/Southern, London

2011-12-07T23:42:00.001Z

Rachel Howard 'Regulus', 2011 (Detail), acrylic, house hold gloss and oil on canvas

The exhibition of paintings 'Folie A Deux' at Blain/Southern is until 22nd December. I know Rachel is part of theLondon scene, well known for hanging out with Mr.Hirst and being a kind ofgothic girl with a Francis Bacon vibe and married to the Director ofOtherCriteria, but we won't hold that against her. This is an interestingpainting, for me she does have her moments when her she focuses on abstraction. But I think she gets distracted at being a kind of naughty British Cecily Brown with her suggestive figures, these leave me cold. Blain/Southern explore some interesting childhood ideas in theirpress release:

'Howard grew up on a farm in County Durham and attended a Quakerschool, the questions that unsettled her childhood and troubled her inadolescence (“If God made me, then who made God?”) remain anchored in her work.“I am petrified of death,” she explains, “I can accept that I will rot andputrefy, but it’s the idea that I will no longer love, paint or think thatchills me”. Rachel Howard does not believe in God. But she believes in life –in living, and she believes in art – in painting. It is this faith that shinesthrough her work, and imbues her art with a quality that Joachim Pissarro hasdeclared “sublime” according to Kant’s Critique of Judgement: “Thesublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as itimmediately involves, or else by its presence, provokes, a representation oflimitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.” Howard’swork is total and limitless in its refined glossy abstraction: it allows us tograsp a part of human existence that can not be seen but only felt.' ..and thisis an interesting painting also, reminds me of the last Rothko paintings wherethey just empty out their life..these are real suicide paintings, he was found dead in his studio weeks later.

Rachel Howard 'Suicide Painting 4', 2007, household gloss and acrylic on canvas

Mark Rothko 'Black on Gray' 1969

Discussion by Gerhard Richter with Nick Serota and by Adrian Searle on the painting processes in Richter's paintings...

2011-12-05T10:25:00.001Z

there are two fascinating documentary video's here: An interesting little video by Adrian Searle where he discusses (click here) Gerhard Richter at Tate, London (with sound effects..) also there is an intimate discussion bty Richter with Tate director Nicholas Serota on painting and his life etc, well worth exploring, click here http://gu.com/p/32hhp

Abstraction and Metamodernism, a way forward?..

2011-11-23T14:31:00.001Z

Is there a way forward for abstraction through the 'metamodernist' position of Luke Turner based upon and with reference to the notion of Metamodernism as described by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in 'Notes on metamodernism' (Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 2, 2010) or do we not need to define such a standpoint through manifestos anymore?..Abstraktion would like to hear your ideas?...

Metamodernism Manifesto/ Luke Turner

1.We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world.

2. We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child.

3. Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of some colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action.

4. We acknowledge the limitations inherent to all movement and experience, and the futility of any attempt to transcend the boundaries set forth therein. The essential incompleteness of a system should necessitate an adherence, not in order to achieve a given end or be slaves to its course, but rather perchance to glimpse by proxy some hidden exteriority. Existence is enriched if we set about our task as if those limits might be exceeded, for such action unfolds the world.

5. All things are caught up within the irrevocable slide towards a state of maximum entropic dissemblance. Artistic creation is contingent upon the origination or revelation of difference therein. Affect at its zenith is the unmediated experience of difference in itself. It must be art’s role to explore the promise of its own paradoxical ambition by coaxing excess towards presence.

6. The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. The new technology enables the simultaneous experience and enactment of events from a multiplicity of positions. Far from signalling its demise, these emergent networks facilitate the democratisation of history, illuminating the forking paths along which its grand narratives may navigate the here and now.

7. Just as science strives for poetic elegance, artists might assume a quest for truth. All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism. Erroneousness breeds sense.

8. We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus,metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition that lies between, beyond and in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and fragmentary positions. We must go forth and oscillate.

New forms of abstraction 'Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art from Germany' Saatchi HQ, London

2011-11-21T09:49:00.001Z

Isa Genzken 'Geschwister' 2004, plastic, lacquer, mirror foil, glass, metal, wood, fabric 220 x 60 x 100 cm

An alternative to the Gerhard Richter show at Tate Modern is this one at Saatchi's Chelsea HQ entitled: 'Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art from Germany' from 18th November - 30th April 2012, read the Financial Times review. Following the interesting Abstract America exhibition last year, here is one that explores cross-media abstraction in Germany. I like these works by the artist (and ex-wife of Richter) Isa Gentzen..

Isa Gentzen, 'Kinder Filmen I' 2005, Mirror, metal, adhesive tape, magazine and book pages, stamps acrylic, lacquer, spray paint. 280 x 100 cm each panel (Wall Installation of Four Parts

The art of the 24 artists from or based in Germany presented here provokes a re-assessment of the 19th-century ideal of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk', which can be translated as a total, universal art work, or a synthesis of different art forms into one all-embracing unique genre, especially sculpture.

Thomas Kieswetter, 'Barriere' 2010, Sheet metal, steel

'Many of these works ask us to think about the boundaries of art, our perception of it, its cultural specificity and its relationship to other disciplines. Running through the works is another, unconscious, quasi-Gesamtkunstwerk: the baggage of post-war German visual culture. If the work of these 24 artists points to a new kind of 'Gesamtkunstwerk' it is one in which high and low culture, the avant-garde and the historical, the everyday and everything in between can co-exist in a body of works which add up to much more than the sum of their parts.'

These artists including Josephine Meckseper, Markus Selg, Thomas Zipp, Max Frisinger, Gert and Uwe Tobias are in dialogue with previous generations of German artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger and Gerhard Richter.

Albert Oehlen, Thomas Dane Gallery, 'Paintings on the Move' London..

2011-11-08T11:37:00.000Z

Albert Oehlen (c) The artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

One of the finest painters working with abstraction, Albert Oehlen, is currently showing subtle works in an exhibition at the Thomas Dane Gallery, London until 19th November 2011.

'Albert Oehlen - amongst the pre-eminent painters of his generation - pushes the boundaries of his medium to straining point, continuously challenging the canons of painting with a wry humour and brazen originality. The New Yorker Magazine has referred to him as 'the most resourceful painter alive'. This body of work - using charcoal and acrylic on canvas -restricts itself to black and white - and is closely related to his most recent forays into large-scale drawing.

Born in Krefeld, Germany in 1954, Albert Oehlen lives and works principally in Switzerland and is professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His international exhibitions include retrospective exhibitions at the The Whitechapel, London and Arnolfini Bristol (2006), Miami MOCA (2005), solo shows at the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nurenberg (2005) Secession, Vienna (2004), Musée Cantonnal de Lausanne (2004), Musée d'Art Contemporain de Strasbourg (2002), Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover (2001) and the Kunsthalle Basel (1997).'

Installation view, Albert Oehlen (c) The artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

Matt Connors, 'Gas...telephone...one hundred rubles..', Dusseldorf, Germany

2011-10-31T23:40:00.000Z

Matt Connors, 'Slow Return' 2010

Some interesting ideas raised at the recent abstractions of Matt Connors exhibition in Germany at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf until 20th November. 'At a time in which the undetermined and personal nature of abstraction is no longer a given, or as Hamza Walker asks, “once abstraction has acquired legibility, is there such a thing as abstract painting?”...'

Matt Connors, 'Red' oil on canvas, 2010

Matt Connors’ pictures address the 'objectness of painting and the slippage between abstraction and representation while at the same time negotiating the idiosyncrasies of individual vision and creativity'. His works have been seen in solo exhibitions at 'CANADA' in New York, 'The Breeder' in Athens and in the fall will be the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at Lutgen Miejar in Berlin...

Gerhard Richter, Marion Goodman Gallery, Paris

2011-10-27T17:57:00.000+01:00

Um, yes sorry, it's Gerhard Ricter again...this time in Paris at Marion Goodman..

New works, installation view

'The first series of paintings, Perizade (2010), was created by pouring liquid paint freely on glass plates. Here the material of the paint is present and the forms undulate, providing a contrast to the big digital prints entitled Strip (2011), which are composed of a rigorous system of parallel lines. Nevertheless, the point of departure for the Strip is a painting, created by the artist in 1990: Abstract Painting (724-4). With the help of software he divided this work vertically, first in 2, then in 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096. This process led to the creation of 8190 strips, all of the same height as the original painting. At each stage of division the strips got thinner. They are mirrored and repeated which results in patterns. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. These works exhibited here are unique prints chosen and combined from different strips.

New small works, installation view

As Benjamin H.D. Buchloh writes: “The status of painting in these new works is figured as exceptionally fragile, yet it is powerfully formulated in its assimilation to its technological challenges, as though painting was once again on the wane under the impact of technological innovations. Yet in its application of almost Duchampian strategies of fusing technology and extremely refined critical pictorial reflection, Richter's astonishing new works open a new horizon of questions. These might concern the present functions of any pictorial project that does not want to operate in regression to painting's past, but that wants to confront the destruction of painterly experiences with the very practice of painting as radical opposition to technology's totalizing claims, and as manifest act of mourning the losses painting is served under the aegis of digital culture”.'

Sean Scully at the Kerlin Gallery

2011-10-21T07:49:00.000+01:00

Here are a couple of the photographs taken by Nick Smith when I went to interview Sean Scully in Germany earlier this year. The painting behind Sean in the top photograph is titled "Put it Back" and belongs to Sean's son Oisin. The interview is in the current edition of Turps Banana along with Dan Coombs piece on Tomma Abts. You can download it from itunes here.

This one is just to prove that I was there!

Sean is currently showing work at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin 6 October - 19 November. The exhibition includes these delightful works:

Cut Ground Blue Pink 2011 153 x 153

Wall of Light Grey White 2011 153 x 153

From earlier this year, Ryoji Ikeda 'The Transfinite'

2011-10-17T10:17:00.001+01:00

For more information click here: The Armory

The Indiscipline of Painting: International abstraction from the 1960's to now, Tate St.Ives, UK

2011-10-08T01:11:00.003+01:00

Mary Heilmann 'Primalon Ballroom' 2002, Oil on canvas and wood, 50 x 40”,

Kenny Schachter & Ilona Rich, ©Mary Heilmann

At last Tate St.Ives has a large international show and it's on abstraction. I go down there every year and I am always frustrated that it doesn't seem to get enough of the more sexy works in the Tate vaults. 'The Indiscipline of Painting' is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now and this time they have been given some money and have got some excellent loaned works from diverse artists: Stella, Heilmann, Warhol, Dan Walsh, Gerhard Richter, Sherrie Levine, Katharina Grosse and Peter Halley and Tomma Abts to name a few. Here are a few words from the press release..
'The exhibition is selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50 years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today. The exhibition runs 8th October 2011 - 3rd January 2012.

Andy Warhol, 'Eggs' 1982, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 228.6 x 177.8 cm,

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; FoundingCollection, Contribution:The Andy Warhol Foundation

for theVisual Arts, Inc. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, NY & DACS,London

Ars Electronica and Cern need you - The Answers no longer compute.

2011-10-07T00:30:00.001+01:00

A clip from an article in The Arts Newspaper “I consider Cern one of the most culturally significant places today,” says Ariane Koek, head of Cern’s arts programme. “It’s really breaking the boundaries of what we know about the world and how we understand it. It seemed to me that it also had the potential to be one of the most inspirational places on earth for artists.”

This sentiment is echoed at the centre where Koek experienced a “rabid hunger” from the scientists for artistic intervention. However, the residency programme was funded externally by private donors because the contributions by Cern’s 20 European member states, which totalled almost €1bn last year, are earmarked for science and technology alone. Ars Electronica will sponsor the €10,000 stipend. Abstraktionists apply here Ars Electronica

This competition is open to all kinds of innovative concepts and ideas in the fields of art and technology.

Meng Tang UofM MFA Blog

The subtle minimalism in the paintings of Markus Amm, David Kordansky Gallery, Culver City, CA

2011-09-28T21:49:00.001+01:00

Found this interesting exhibition of abstract painting, this is the work of Markus Amm at David Kordansky Gallery. it is very subtle, have a look..

Markus Amm, David Kordansky Gallery, Gallery 2, Culver City

There seems like there is little going on here...I've been to Culver City, I don't remember there being much there, well now they have Markus Amm and the Kordansky Gallery! The show includes small, medium and large-scale works that fall into two broad categories: acrylic-and-gesso paintings on canvas, and oil paintings on gesso board.

'Amm utilizes the constituent elements of painting as the foundations for works that reassess the legacy of geometric abstraction. He assigns content-based value to what might be mistaken as purely formal practice, and shows how even the most basic, platonic shapes can be mined for connections to a complex contemporary world. In some cases, this means revisiting preconceived ideas about the relationship between image, material and support; in others, he shows how the conceptual envelopes in which painting is seen readily influence its composition.

Markus Amm, 'Untitled', 2010, oil on gesso board, 13.7 x 11.8 inches (35 x 30 cm)

These monochromatic fields are divided by sharp lines; their brief moments of color separate the compositions into interlocking forms, provoking readings in which shapes fit into, surround, complete, or sit on top of each other. The lyrical quality of the work belies the fact that Amm applies the lines by using tape and acrylic spray paint. Relative speeds of painting and looking are played against one another, and the eye slows down in places where it is accustomed to speeding up.'

There is a subtle touch with these works, they are more than just minimalist explorations but interesting evocations in paint, do they explore emotion? who knows, does it matter, just great painting...

2011-09-26T23:40:00.001+01:00

The team at CERN have apparently revealed that light travels slower than nutrinos and in doing so they appear to have completely challenged the description of nature that has been in place all my life. Einstein when he arrived at his theory of relativity declared that his work did not undermine the work of Newton's. It took 200 years for the mechanical theories to be superseded by special relativity. General relativity was published in 1916 and was based on the speed of light. Now 96 years later it has been suggested that this model doesn't stand up - is not true. So you can imagine how excited I was that science's certainty was possibly flawed. ( Regular followers will understand why this appeals despite being a fan) but here is a fascinating description by Ethan Siegel theoretical astrophysicist, of what the CERN experimenters are up to and a set of reasons why light may still be the fastest thing in the universe! No comparison to art at all.

Robert Motherwell at Bernard Jacobson, first 'Works on Paper' in the UK

2011-09-23T23:24:00.003+01:00

Robert Motherwell, 'Red Open', 1980, Acrylic/charcoal on canvas, 35.6 x 45.7 cm

The significance of Robert Motherwell is well-known, he is very popular at Abstraktion for the diversity of his ideas in drawing, painting, collage. It is hard to believe that this is the first exhibition of his works on paper in the United Kingdom and well done Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 6 Cork Street, London. This show is open from 11 October to 26 November 2011.

Robert Motherwell was a major figure in the and development of Abstract Expressionism and the youngest member of the ‘New York School’, a term he coined. I explored his use of Zen Buddhist ideas and iconography for my thesis and realsied how broad and deep his influence was on his time and since. Yet he remains the lesser known of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Robert Motherwell 'Beside the Sea No. 45', 1967, Acrylic/ink on paper, 76.5 x 54.9 cm

'His career spanned five decades during which time he created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. A passionate advocate and articulate spokesman for Abstract Expressionism, he believed that ideas and emotions were best communicated through the bold forms and gestural lines of abstract art. This exhibition will include sixty works from the 'Lyric Suite', a group of works from the 'Beside the Sea' series and a selection of works based upon James Joyce’s 'Ulysses' as well as an abstract portrait of the poet. A further selection of works from the 1940s to the 1980s includes 'Elegy' and 'Je t’aime' as well as automatism drawings, work from the 'Drunk with Turpentine', 'Gesture' and the 'Open' series.

Bernard Jacobson Gallery held the first exhibition in Britain of Robert Motherwell’s 'Open' series in 2008, and in 2013 the gallery will hold an exhibition of the collages. In 2015, to coincide with Motherwell’s centenary of his birth, they will have a major exhibition of paintings.' Robert Motherwell we salute you...

Robert Motherwell, 'The Measure of Things,1979, Oil on gesso panel, 17.8 x 33.6 cm

Sean Scully interview and Turps Banana launch, Hoxton, London

2011-09-20T16:06:00.002+01:00

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Scully in Germany earlier this year. You can read the interview in Turps Banana-Issue 10, UK painting magazine.. David Moxon and I attended the launch last night in Hoxton, London. With our wonderful hosts Marcus Harvey and Peter Ashton-Jones and with bar snacks at hand, we had a great evening. Abstraktion met the art historian Nicholas Usherwood from Abstract Critical and discussed, guess what, abstraction. Also present and engaging were David Ben White, Christopher P Wood, Garth Lewis, Gus Harvey, Jeffrey Dennis, Jasper Joffe, Clive Hodgson, Tim Renshaw amongst many others we didn't have the time to speak to...

Abstract Critical meets Abstraktion..

Remembering Richard Hamilton and 'An Exhibit', 1957

2011-09-15T00:11:00.001+01:00

The British artist Richard Hamilton has died aged 89. Hamilton made his name in 1956 with the Independent Group exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery entitled 'This is Tomorrow' (re-exhibited earlier this year) with his now infamous collage 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' and ushering in Pop Art. He also designed the 'white album' for The Beatles, documented the Rolling Stones drug bust with Robert Fraser and Mick Jagger in the the back of the police car in 'Swingeing London' and worked closely with Duchamp. But I want to explore his contribution to abstraction in collaboration with Victor Pasmore entitled 'An Exhibit' from 1957.

Richard Hamilton (with Victor Pasmore), Exhibit 2,
installation view, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1959. Courtesy the artist

This has been re-made a number of times and filmed, especially at Generali Foundation in Austria. 'The premise of 'An Exhibit' was to show 'no objects, no ideas': a show that consisted of colourful panels loosely suspended in space so that visitors could amble freely between them. This formal decision to do without exhibits and make the display itself the subject of the show can be traced back to a series of attempts in modern art to expand painting into space, as in the case of El Lissitzky or Mondrian, or to elevate the display to the status of a subject in itself, as in the case of Frederick Kiesler or Herbert Bayer. 'An Exhibit' is relevant also as a form of interrogation of the institutional space and the roles played by authorship and the position of the beholder: composed of modular elements, the space enables forever different subjective experiences of spatiality as the visitors become authors who "conceive" the space in forever new ways. The translucent panels, finally, mark a play with the experience of transparency and opacity that is of decisive importance to the subject’s perceptions in a world defined by media.'

Re-exhibition, 'An Exhibit', Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria

Check out the exhibition from earlier this year and all the other great art at the Generali Foundation in Vienna. Read Jonathan Jones comments in the Guardian. Another great artist from the 1960's dies, Richard Hamilton 1922-2011.

'Abstrkt', Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

2011-09-13T21:34:00.001+01:00

'The Tempest', Marc Leone

'Abstrkt An Exhibit of Works of Abstraction', 30th September - 28th October 2011.

'There are at least three components to a work of art. Often one of them, Subject, supercedes the others, bordering on distraction and flirtation with nostalgia. Abstraction diminishes or sublimates the role of 'Subject' in such a way as to allow Form a chance to take center stage. In essence, Form becomes the Subject. Ironically, this rebalancing gives way to a clearer, and perhaps more truthful, experience of a work of art as a real thing - something that is itself rather than a reference to some external 'other.'

Manifest, launches its eighth season with a project intended to feature and explore contemporary abstraction. From non-objective, geometric, expressive, etc., to figurative abstraction (works in which there is a recognizable subject matter that is distorted, is in some way not 'realistic', or is clearly secondary to the overall formal nature of the work).

'Primitive Tumbler', Noel Paris

For this exhibit 374 artists submitted 977 works for consideration. Twenty-two works by the following 19 artists were selected by our two-part jury/curatorial process for presentation in the gallery and catalog.'

Gerhard Richter's painting about 911, in Tate Modern exhibition

2011-08-29T11:42:00.000+01:00

Gerhard Richter, 'September' oil on canvas, 2003

This painting, commemorating the 911 attack on the Twin Towers in New York, shall be in the forthcoming show at the Tate Modern (see earlier blog Gerhard Richter: Panorama). Does the painting have a resonance? Does it work as an image of such a tragic event?..

Phyllida Barlow, 'Rig', Hauser & Wirth, London

2011-08-27T20:22:00.004+01:00

Phyllida Barlow, 'Untitled: banners', 2010, fabric,timber, polystyrene, cement, scrim © Phyllida Barlow, courtesy theartist/Hauser and Wirth, photo: Oliver Ottenschlager  

Waving the flag fro abstraction, Phyllida Barlow remains a unique British talent and has been so for the last 40 years. Her new exhibition entitled 'Rig' from 2nd September to 22nd October at Hauser & Wirth, London, shows little sign of her strength waning. In this show she is using as usual a variety of materials from the urban environment of recycled ephemera, such as fabric, sticks, polystyrene and cement.

Phyllida Barlow ‘untitled: broken shelf 2’, 2011, timberlengths, plaster, scrim, fabric

'Barlow's sculptural practice is centred on herexperimentation with these materials and the process of re-contextualising themto create large-scale, three-dimensional collages. Her constructions are oftencrudely painted in industrial or synthetic colours, resulting in abstract,seemingly unstable forms: the seams of their construction left completelyvisible, revealing the dynamics of their making.'

There is a strong anti-monumental quality to herwork that grows on you and retains its real power for when you are in front of it. This physicality, I think, is vital when responding to abstraction: 'Things aren't just visual. They are sensations ofphysicality.' (Phyllida Barlow, 'Modern Painters', Summer 2011.)

Phyllida Barlow was born in1944 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. She lives and works in London. In thelate 1960s, Barlow began teaching at the Slade School of Art as Professorof Fine Art. In 2009, she stopped teaching in order to focus on her own work.

What does a straight line communicate?

2011-08-24T21:52:00.000+01:00

In the light of the plethora of taped and rulered edges in paintings that I am currently being presented I wondered what you might think of this trend. I have on a number of occasions given my opinion to this form of reductionism but the fashion seems to be growing and I now have to wonder if I am missing something. In the past Barnet Newman's work has moved me deeply and so I am not unaware of the potential impact of simplified forms and I really admire Mondrian's courage.

The simplicity is tempting, the lack of personal exposure comforting, the boundaries certain and readable, the invention of form and colour programmable and the overal appearance decorative but the grit is missing. Your suggestions would be appreciated because my curmudgeonly response to such work is now instinctive and not positive.

Aeneas Wilder at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

2011-08-23T11:57:00.000+01:00

Aeneas Wilder's installation at the Longside Gallery, YSP is brilliant. The construction sets a tension in the room because all the pieces of wood are precariously balanced on each other to create the circular, slatted curtain. Having bouncy kids in the room made this anxiety greater because the slightest touch would have meant the dramatic collapse of 10,000 pieces of wood and 200 hours of work. It was like teetering with vertigo on a high ledge - will they, shall I, could I? The metaphor and fragility was only part of why the work was so engaging. The visual effect was as if the wood and the gaps became a mirrored screen playing with the positive- negative perception. The simplicity of the wooden blocks was reminiscent of Japanese dojos because of the precision and the grid generated beautiful disruptions to the views of people in the room and of the parkland view outside. Aeneas's work is evidently considered, patient and precise. There is a performative occasion on 03.11.11 when Aeneas kicks his installation down but sadly the event is fully booked.

Born in Edinburgh in 1967 Wilder trained at both Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee and Edinburgh College of Art. He is now based in Edinburgh and Japan and works extensively around the world.

Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Modern, London

2011-08-22T23:49:00.004+01:00

Gerhard Richter, 'Abstrakt bild 894-7', 2005 (this painting may be in the show)

An exhibition of Gerhard Richter's paintings is taking place next month at Tate Modern, London from 6th October-8th January 2012. Spanning nearly five decades and coinciding with the artist’s 80thbirthday. ''Gerhard Richter: Panorama' is major chronological retrospective thatgroups together significant moments of this painter’s career. Itincludes portraits based on photographs such as the famous 'Betty' 1988,abstractions, subtle landscapes, colour charts, works on paper, mirrors andthree important glass constructions.

Richter was one of the first German artists to reflect on thehistory of National Socialism, creating paintings of family members who hadbeen members, as well as victims of, the Nazis, as well as canvases reminiscentof images of the bombing of Dresden. In 1988 he produced the 15-part work 'October18' 1977, a sequence of black and white paintings based on images of the BaaderMeinhof group. Richter has continued to respond to significant moments inhistory; the final room of the exhibition includes September 2005, a paintingof the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.

Alongside works responding to historical events, the show presents manyof Richter’s most ambitious abstract paintings from his 1974 colour chartcontaining 4096 different coloured squares, to his 20-metre long 'Stroke' of1980, presented for the first time outside Germany, to the magisterial andrichly coloured 'Forest' squeegee paintings of 1990 and culminating in thehauntingly beautiful six-part series 'Cage' from 2006 on long loan to Tate.' Gerhard Richter: Panorama is curated by God himself, Tate Director Nicholas Serota and MarkGodfrey.

Ingrid Calame, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

2011-08-20T10:21:00.002+01:00

The American artist Ingrid Calame explores the jokey chance evocations of abstraction in her latest exhibition of works at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh until 8 October. In these new paintings, drawings and tracings, with imagery from cracks in the pavement or car parks appear and disappear in a jamboree of marks, gestures or stains in oil paint on the wall as well as canvas and aluminium, also suggesting aerial maps. Watch her interview below.

Ingrid Calame, ‘Step on a Crack, Break Your Mother’s Back’, 2008

Oil on aluminium, 101.6 x 61 cm (not in exhibition) © Frith Street Gallery

Initially, you look at the works and see ‘old school' Abstract Expressionism, then you realise she is playing with your aesthetic sensibilities yet paying tribute to 1950’s abstraction/automatism. There is a looseness to her approach to painting that is interesting as she questions how fixated we have become with Minimalism..

Ingrid is represented in the UK by Frith Street Gallery, London and James Cohan Gallery in the US.

'Material Worlds' at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, UK

2011-08-08T18:26:00.003+01:00

To be honest this is a mixed bag of sculptural works, all on sale through Sotheby's and using the grounds of Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds as a back drop. There could have been more radical works on show, and the 'textile art' bug, just looks awful. At this time, in days like these, the curators could have made more of a statement regarding the state of play of international sculpture..?

Here's the press release..'Sotheby’s is delighted to announce an exclusive collection of leading designers and artists for MATERIAL WORLDS, its second outdoor selling exhibition in collaboration with Sudeley Castle, from 28 July to 30 September 2011. The exhibition brings together cutting-edge, one-off and limited edition works in strikingly different materials by 11 artists and designers, including Tord Boontje, Amanda Levete, David Adjaye, Ingo Maurer and Paul Fryer. Set amongst the romantic ruins of Sudeley and its award-winning gardens, the works will challenge the boundaries of Design, Art and Craft.' .......yeh, right, viva la Revolucion!..

William Crozier, influential British painter, dies

2011-08-04T18:59:00.002+01:00

William Crozier, a post war artist and influential lecturer died in July. His work has moved between fluid abstraction and landscape influences. A member of the post war generation in Britain, he was educated at the Glasgow School of Art. He spent time in Paris and Dublin before settling in London, where he quickly gained a reputation as the 1950s through the early success and notoriety of his exhibitions of assemblages and paintings. His early career shows a keen interest in existentialism and a highly personalized vision of nature and how to replicate this with paint. Crozier was represented by Flowers East Gallery and exhibited widely in London, Glasgow, Dublin and Europe. From the 1980s when he set up studios in Ireland and the UK, his painting of the landscape has blossomed with an extraordinary radiance and confidence. Read his Guardian Obituary here.

'The Shape of Days', Serge Murphy at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada

2011-08-03T23:25:00.000+01:00

An intriguing exhibition of found sculpture is currently being exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada, until 2nd October 2011. These are new abstract works and the first solo exhibition in a Montreal museum by Murphy. The walls display a multitude of statuettes made from wood, cardboard, paint, string and all kinds of wire and set on little shelves like 'knick-knacks' or holy icons.

Serge Murphy, 'La Forme' Séquence 2, found media, 2011
Photo: Pascal Grandmaison

“It’s called 'La forme des jours' because these sculptures represent the passage of time, of days. In my work there’s always a relationship to time, it’s almost a material for me. I work in my studio every day, it’s a constant in my life. Making sculpture is a task that obsesses me,and it’s time consuming work. My relationship to reality is sublimated, transcended by this activity, by this daily use of my hands. It’s what gives shape to my days. Sometimes a simple shape, sometimes an excessive one, a shape that comes into my head or emerges under my hands. Sculpting is looking for shapes that resemble us...I construct as I improvise and I improvise as I construct, in a mixture of calculated gestures and experiments. I create associations of images that in my mind refer to people, to landscapes, to moments,to myself, to abstraction…”

Despite its make shift, do-it-yourself appearance, Murphy’s art harks back to the historical phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosities or the 'Wunderkammer' of the Renaissance, but re-orienting it to the opposite of the conventional definition of a treasure or wonder, to encompass humble, fragile little objects of no apparent aesthetic value, shabby scrap.

Serge Murphy, 'La Forme' Séquence 3, found media, 2011
Photo: Pascal Grandmaison

“Shabby materials are living materials. They don’t foist themselves upon us, they are unassuming but they communicate something intense. They are easily accessible and just as easily modifiable. In the work of some tinkerers, there is a surrealism, a freedom to put together found objects and manufactured ones, which I find sympathetic. But I don’t have their artlessness and besides, my work invokes the history of the art of sculpture!”

Serge Murphy, born in Montreal in 1953, is not only a prolific sculptorbut also a video artist and a poet. His collection of poems La vie quotidienne est éternelle was published in 2010 by Éditions de l’Hexagone. In 2007, he was awarded the prestigious OziasLeduc Prize from the Fondation Émile-Nelligan.

John Hoyland 1934 - 2011

2011-08-01T16:12:00.000+01:00

A great painter died last night. Abstract painter, John Hoyland, an inspiration, influence and teacher to many has left the studio.

photo. Nick Smith.

Abstract sculpture, Roche Court/New Art Centre, Hampshire, UK

2011-07-28T16:45:00.000+01:00

New Art Centre (Roche Court Sculpture Park) in Hampshire, continues to champion abstraction with new sculptural works to add to its collection from contemporary and modernist works from Eva Berendez, Richard Deacon, Eva Rothschild to Barbara Hepworth.

Eva Rothschild 'Someone and Someone' 2008. Aluminium, enamel paint.

Edition 2 of 3 + 1 AP, 450 × 400cm / 14ft 9 1/5 × 13ft 1 1/2 ins

'The New Art Centre was founded in 1958. The original gallery was located in Sloane Street, London. In 1994 it was relocated to Roche Court in Wiltshire, a nineteenth-century house in parkland. The existing house and Orangery were built in 1804. Together with the grounds, Roche Court is now used as a sculpture park and educational centre where work is shown' inside and out providing a survey of sculpture for the enjoyment of the public. The New Art Centre represents various artists' estates including Barbara Hepworth, Kenneth Armitage and Ian Stephenson. The gallery is the venue for a changing programme of exhibitions. All works are for sale and the New Art Centre exhibits annually at the Basel Art Fair.'


Eva Berendez, 'Untitled' 2011, plaster, 55.5 × 36.5 × 3.9 cm / 1ft 9 3/4 × 1ft 2 1/4 × 1 1/2 ins


Richard Deacon 'Path' 2011 Edition 8 of 12, 4 cast polyester resin pieces

In addition the New Sculpture Centre also have a show coming up of Alison Wilding: How The Land Lies

Jonathan Jones tells it like it can be

2011-07-28T08:29:00.000+01:00

Jonathon Jones art critic with The Guardian discusses how our perceptions of the natural world has changed and so has the way it is represented and with this observation comes a route into the work of some artists. The look may be different, abstract even, but the romantic inclination is still evident. What is not widely acknowledged is this romantic tag with all it's idealism and fantasy can also apply to those that are constructing the models of reality under the guise of science and the abstraction of maths. After years of asserting this and having had my intentions that align with this described as gimickry I am delighted to read an art critic that gets it. I now wonder how Mr Jones will get on finding art that matches this mighty ongoing challenge. For artists, like the scientists faced with the quantum description of the world, it has become harder without huge colliders, real or metaphorical to reveal god, nature......reality. Maestros Bohr and Feynman have gone and so has the Romantic Realist Mr Twombly. There are some still working at it Mr Jones but like many scientists without their Cern, they are hidden away in small rooms with the odd discovery going unnoticed and badly in need of imaginative support. To take up this challenge is a difficult art. The comfort of pop and the concrete is so comforting.

Again Mr Jones provides a good read.

Darrell Viner at The Henry Moore Institute

2011-07-27T20:43:00.000+01:00

Darrell Viner Early Work 28th July 2011 - 30th October 2011

Computer Drawing Darrell Viner, 1975/6, Courtesy Farah Bajull / Leeds Museums & Galleries (Art Gallery)

From The Henry Moore Institute
Darrell Viner (1947 - 2001) was a pioneer in the field of computer art. He originally turned to computers to pursue his interest in movement and animation and went on to apply the technology to kinetic and interactive sculpture.

Darrell Viner:Early Work focuses on Viner's experimental work at the Slade School of Art in the mid-1970s and celebrates the recent acquisition to the Leeds Museum & Galleries Sculpture Collection of a series of his computer drawings from this period. Created with a pen plotter, which Viner regarded as a pliable drawing tool, the images have a remarkable hand-drawn quality. The artist described them as a 'journey in mark making'.

Together with the drawings, the exhibition includes documentation of Viner's early kinetic sculptures that show the continuity between his work in two and three dimensions. For his degree show at the Slade, he made a set of animated wooden sculptures, which he described as 'creepy crawly creatures'. These were later shown at the Royal Academy, where the moving legs scratched the wooden floor, taking on the character of automated drawing machines. This experiment led to the computer animation 'Inside/Outside' (1976), a film drawn by a virtual automaton programmed to simulate the actions of a kinetic sculpture, which is screened within the show.

In addition to the works on paper and film, Darrell Viner: Early Work presents a later kinetic sculpture by Viner - from the mid-1980s - that is activated by the shadows of passers by. As with all of Viner's works, this opens a conversation between man and machine to propose an expanded understanding of the study of sculpture.

Background

Viner was born in Coventry in 1946. His father, a clerk, died when his son was only five, leaving his wife, a factory worker, to bring up the family. The young Viner found inventive ways to stimulate his wide-ranging curiosity: he played Beethoven to himself on a wind-up gramophone, and detonated objects with homemade explosives.

After leaving school with three O-levels, Viner worked in the research department at Courtaulds Textiles in the late 1960s, where he experienced computer and electronic systems. When he moved to London around 1970, he worked on the lighting and rigging for rock bands, testing his designs in his landlady's garage. He is known to have built the first sound activated lighting system in the UK in 1968.

The Guardian Obituary "In the last months, Viner had been working on two installations for Thinktank, at Millenium Point in Birmingham, now almost completed. He leaves behind a body of work that will become increasingly visible as people appreciate the enlarged definition of art to which he adhered."
Darrell Viner, artist, born December 12 1946; died November 15 2001.

Bronx Calling: AIM biennial

2011-07-26T18:29:00.000+01:00

My Big Ol Black Amex - G J Shuldiner - an example

Gabriel Shuldiner is one of the 72 artists selected by Wayne Northcross and Jose Ruiz to show in Bronx Calling, an AIM biennial exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. “AIM was launched 30 years ago to give participants in the program real-world experience on how to survive as a professional artist, the type of training you don’t get in art school,” said Bronx Museum Director Holly Block. “The idea behind AIM is to empower artists, asking them what they want to learn about the profession, helping them network and build a sense of community, and exposing their work to new audiences. We believe that artists play a critical role in exploring the issues and ideas of our time and supporting emerging artists is part of the core mission of the Bronx Museum.”
In conjunction with the 30^th anniversary of AIM, the Bronx Museum is working with Fordham University Press to publish Taking AIM! The Business of Being an Artist Today, a detailed guide with information and tools to help emerging artists develop strategies for building and sustaining successful careers.
The exhibition runs until September 26th

Zaha Hadid the abstraktionist

2011-07-19T07:33:00.001+01:00

In a posting by Jon Michaud on The New Yorker blog from an original article by John Seabrook, Zaha Hadid quotes Malevich as an inspiration and expresses why abstraction is valuable to her.

“Abstraction opened the possibility of unfettered invention,” Hadid said in her Pritzker [Prize] address. When I asked her to explain how, she said that abstraction gave her a way to study how lines intersect. When she drew, she said, “I wanted to capture a line, and the way a line changes and distorts when you try to follow it through a building, as it passes through regions of light and shadow. You know when you look through a building from a window on the outside, and the line you are following is distorted by the space? That was what I was trying to see with my paintings and my whooshings.”

Realism or abstraction?

Abstraction and Atonality at Museum Kampa

2011-07-14T22:54:00.000+01:00

This exhibition features three very important individuals of the art world - Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka and Arnold Schönberg and will be the highlight of the year. Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schönberg are something very unique for Prague and to exhibit these artists together has a logic. The exhibition’s concept is based on the examination of the relationship between abstraction and atonality, whose principles are related. Indeed, patterns of music and visual compositions were to a large extent interlinked at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The project emphasises that it stems from the Munich concert of Schönberg’s composition in 1911, where Kandinsky was present. The exhibition shows how music inherently influenced the development of abstract painting, but of course there exists a retroaction. Also during this period, that is around 1910, the long process of mutual penetration of various artistic fields begins the erasure of boundaries between them, the convergence of principles on which they are based.

In this sense the exhibition focuses on one of these possible relationships and at the same time builds on the exhibition titled the Origins of Abstract Art, which took place several years ago in Paris.

The article in The Prague Post by Mimi Fronczak Rogers discusses the interaction and history of these artists and examines the structure of the exhibition.

Support Japanese Artists

2011-07-09T22:46:00.000+01:00

http://kuenstlerhelfenkuenstlern.carbonmade.com/

Artists wanting to submit works, should send these by post this week to:

Galerie Appel

Corneliusstr. 30

60325 Frankfurt am Main

069 752364

Works should be ready for hanging.

Please send a biography with birth place and birth date to angelika.gilberg@gmx.de

AUCTION European artists support Japanese colleagues

The devastating tsunami and earthquake catastrophe in Japan is a tragedy, that will take the country several decades to come to terms with. Innumerable people died, were wounded, are homeless, have lost their livelihood and it will take a long time before a sense of normality can return.

Numerous artists - painters, sculptors, ceramicists and artists working in other media, have been affected by the destruction. Studios and workshops have been ruined, which makes it impossible to continue normal work.

In some cases, the largest part of the work of a lifetime has been destroyed, these are irreplaceable losses. Yet, even in such cases, the fundamentals to continue life and work, after the catastrophe have to be established.

Japans contribution to art history of the world is of vast importance and many artists world-wide have a close artistic and humane bond towards the country. Thus, more than fifty artists got together, to indicate their support, by means of a charity auction.

Artworks of the following artists will come up for auction: Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Hiromi Akiyama, Raimer Jochims, Thomas Kaminsky, Klaus Münch, Otto Greis, Heinz Kreuz, Icke Winzer, Hans Steinbrenner, Christa von Schnitzler, Yoshimi Hashimoto, Walter Moroder, Michael Rögler, Domenico d'Oora, Bernd Mechler, Ansgar Nierhoff, Klaus Jürgen Fischer, Hideaki Yamanobe, Hans Karl Kandel, Martina Kügler, Paul Zita, Jürgen Wegener, Winfried Virnich, Heinz Breloh, Mathias Völker, Nicole van den Plas, Lionel Röhrscheid, Dietz Eilbacher, Markus Friedmann Strieder, Angelika Gilberg, Leena van der Made, Claus Delvaux, Deniz Alt, Mirek Macke, Giorgio Capogrossi, Charles Köwi, Paul Greenberg, Max Pauer, Uta Schneider, Karin Raths, Eva Weingärtner, Heide Lauterbach, Rudolf Kaltenbach, Almut Aue, Marina Herrmann, Lisa Endriss, Yuko Takasudo, Mariam Sattari, Michael Runschke, Alexander von Falkenhausen, Peter Mc Lennon, Corinna Mayer, Tobias Rehberger. Further artworks have been requested from: Ottmar Hörl, Neo Rauch, and James Reineking.

The auction is under the patronage of the German ambassador in Japan, Dr. Volker Stanzel and is assisted by the German-Japanese Association in Frankfurt am Main, the Japanese Consulate General/Frankfurt, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, and Auktionshaus Arnold/Frankfurt.

Auction: Preview : Public auction:

Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Schaumainkai 17, 60594 Frankfurt/M. 6. – 9. September 2011, 10 a.m – 5 p.m. Saturday, 10.9., 2 p.m.

Jonathan Jones puts nail on head

2011-07-07T23:21:00.000+01:00

"Are we a nation of abstract art snobs?
There's strength and truth to be found in abstract expressionism – British sceptics need to get over their puritanical hauteur.
Britain has never "got" abstract art. Even articles that appeared this week marking the death of Cy Twombly attracted comments of the "my child could do that" variety. It is tempting to dismiss these attacks as philistine, but that would be to ignore an eminently respectable and artistically sophisticated British tradition of disdain for abstract painting."
The full article can be read on the Guardian website but he finishes with " This scepticism must, in the end, go back to the Reformation and its fear of graven images. Somewhere in your psyche, abstraction-haters, when you look at Twombly's lush colours you see a medieval stained-glass window: and the puritan in you wants to smash it.".

Cy was here.

2011-07-06T00:03:00.000+01:00

A brilliant, casual, visual poet that challenged the formal.

Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP courtesy of the Guardian
Bacchus courtesy of Artnet

wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Twombly

The Art Story
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-twombly-cy.htm

Richard Aldrich's 'Museo' at Corvi Mora, London

2011-06-18T22:11:00.000+01:00


Richard Aldrich, 'Sophisticated Lady', 2009, Oil, wax and pencil on linen,

These are simple minimal and essentially gestural paintings, yet without either 'Minimalist' or 'Expressionist' rhetoric. Aldrich has developed an approach to abstraction that moves us beyond 20th Century ideology and, let's face it, baggage! I cut this from the Corvi Mora press release:

'here is no grand statement, no singular concept to present, but rather a constellation of subtle gestures that, over time, space, medium and format, are coexisting and effecting one and other. The thesis, as it were, is more global and cannot be seen in a single painting, but rather the paintings become almost a kind of subject or subject matter in an embodiment, as opposed to an illustration, of systems interacting.' words by Richard Aldrich. Sorry, the show finished today.

The painting above is large at 147.3 x 213.4 cm and reminds me of the late works of Patrick Heron or most of the paintings of Clem Crosby, they are reminiscent of Motherwell, Kline and De Kooning, even Heilman, but then again they're not, they are by Richard Aldrich, born in 1986, ..oh to shake of that old baggage...

Richard Aldrich, 'Untitled', 2005, Oil and wax on panel, 50.2 x 38.1 cm

Roger Ackling at Chelsea Space

2011-06-18T10:32:00.000+01:00

Roger Ackling: Down To Earth
21.06.11 - 30.07.11

CHELSEA space is honoured to present recent work by Roger Ackling. For more than forty years Ackling has made his work by projecting sunlight through a magnifying glass to burn lines of tiny dots onto found and discarded materials. The wood onto which he burns his geometric patterns is often driftwood found on coastal walks but he also works on remnants of obsolete objects, unidentifiable or broken - weathered by time and the elements and often including rusted nails, holes, stains or daubs of earlier paintwork, hinting at their previous useful existence. For the exhibition at CHELSEA space Ackling will show a group of works made on discarded wooden boxes and the handles of tools.Through the slow and meticulous, solitary process of drawing with the sun, his practice is repetitive and ritualistic; simultaneously this ritual or routine of mark making could be seen to be matter of fact and ordinary. The work is also incredibly pragmatic - an entire exhibition can be made from found materials, worked on using a pre-existing and cost-free energy source, and can then be packed in a small bag and carried across continents. Ackling also poses a philosophical question: “what is the work – the artefact or the smoke?”Born in Isleworth, London in 1947, Ackling studied at St. Martin’s from 1965-1968 alongside a group of artists who challenged traditional notions of sculptural production. Since that period, Roger Ackling’s meditative art practice could also be seen as ecological and scientific in the sense that the materials are pre-existing, recycled/upcycled, and that he harnesses light from the sun through glass to transfer energy in the form of heat to create marks.Roger Ackling’s work has been included in many public collections including those at Tate, the V&A and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He was recently one of the invited artists working in collaboration with partical and theoretical physicists at CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research. He lives and works in Norfolk and London and is represented by Annely Juda Fine Art London.

Old school re-mix, Gillian Ayres at 80, Arnolfini, Bristol

2011-06-16T21:58:00.000+01:00

Gillian Ayres in 1988 by Geoffrey Robinson

Put the kettle on and light up another fag, here comes Gillian...Arnolfini presents a special exhibition of two works, made fifty years apart, by the influential British painter, Gillian Ayres. One of the most significant artists of her generation, Ayres exhibited several times at Arnolfini during its early days, and her painting 'Break Off' was produced the year Arnolfini was established in 1961. This important work from the Tate collection has been selected on the special occasion of our 50th anniversary by Annabel Rees, co-founder of Arnolfini. ' Break-off' is presented alongside 'Marsland', a new work painted this year. Mel Gooding is giving a talk on her work on 29th July 2011 at Arnolfini.


Gillian Ayres, 'Break Off' Oil on canvas, 1961

Visible Soul at PIFO gallery

2011-06-15T08:03:00.000+01:00

The Fourth Chinese Abstract Art Exhibition at PIFO

Liu Wentao Untitled Drawing on Paper 120×90cm 2011

Wang Huaiqing Feather Mixed Media 200×120cm 2001

The Human Abstract

2011-06-14T07:26:00.000+01:00

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more

If we did not make somebody poor;

And mercy no more could be

If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,

Till the selfish loves increase:

Then cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the grounds with tears;

Then humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of mystery over his head;

And the caterpiller and fly

Feed on the mystery.

And it bears the fruit of deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat;

And the raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea

Sought thro' nature to find this tree;

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the human brain.

William Blake 1794

Jack Smith, the Post-War British abstract painter, dies at 83

2011-06-13T18:57:00.000+01:00

Jack Smith 'Shimmer' oil on canvas, 1962

The British abstract painter Jack Smith died this weekend at the age of 83. Smith was known in his early career during the 1950's, as one of the 'Kitchen Sink' artists, a British cultural movement. Alongside John Bratby, Derrick Greaves and Edward Middleditch, Smith established himself as a realist painter, exploring grim, dark interiors of the post-war era. However, in 1956 he abandoned realism and developed a more direct and abstract approach, exploring the effects of light. In addition his work reflected the influence of Constructivism on British artists at the time. Unfortunately, much like his contemporary Victor Pasmore, Smith was never forgiven by some artists for his switch from bleak realism to the brightly coloured jazz inspired abstract works.

Jack Smith, title unknown, oil on canvas, c. 1990's

He studied at St.Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art under John Minton, John Ruskin-Spear and Carel Weight. He taught at Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court with the likes of William Scott, Peter Lanyon, Peter Potworowski, among many other significant abstract painters of the period. His work is represented in many collections worldwide, including the Tate Collection and is represented by Flowers East Gallery, London. Matthew Collings curated a now seminal show at Flowers East, entitled British Abstract Painting 2001 and included Smith's work among others of his generation. A retrospective of his work is well over due..

Mel Prest at IS Projects

2011-06-09T18:31:00.000+01:00

Mel Prest a Californian artist is visiting IS Projects in Holland. Mel has regularly shown with the Gregory Lind gallery in San Francisco. IS Projects are running an open exhibition whereby they are inviting the artists to bring along one work on Monday June 13th from 17.00 onwards. They have little idea of what work will arrive and you can join them to see what the artists bring to install.

Center Berlin presents Sarah Szczesny

2011-06-09T07:56:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed Sarah Szczesny's sculptural show at Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender, Berlin. particularly The Curse is Beginning to Work, Mixed Blessing and Foe A. Here Center Berlin showing her drawings with an exhibition titled "Monad Fun". Monad has Kantian connection and was used in Greek philosophy as term for unit. Other definitions including musical, mathematical and programming definitions can be found on WIKI.

'Zig Zag: Deliberations on construction, sequence and colour' @ Charlie Dutton Gallery, London

2011-06-06T12:16:00.000+01:00

Links to artists work below:

Andrew Bick, Katrina Blannin, Isha Bohling, Patricj Howlett, Vaness jackson, Marta Marce, Jost Munster, Julian Wakelin

This is an innovative and diverse exhibition of new developments in abstraction. The exhibition which is opening this week at Charlie Dutton Gallery (Holborn Tube) Princeton Street, London from this Friday (Private View) 9th June-2nd July, 2011.

These artists have developed an understanding for the possibility of an ‘internal logic’ in their work; an idea which artists such as Mary and Kenneth Martin talked about in their teaching in the 1950s, as well as explore ideas of ‘colour interaction’ and ‘colour juxtaposition’.

Isha Bohling

'In her essay, ‘The Writings of Mary Martin’ 1990, Hilary Lane discusses Mary Martin’s idea that all ‘words’ or information needed to describe the artworks should be embedded in the work itself; that written language cannot always express or explain the processes and decisions made during their construction. Mary Martin wanted the story of how her work was made to be clear to the person when looking at it. And although proportion, rhythm and measurement were key she wanted to emphasise the unexpected and a need to remain inventive. Of the process of construction itself Martin wrote that it is: ‘a thinking making process, not necessarily in three dimensions. Internal logic is the key. The success of such a process is wholly dependent on a right choice of symbols. The choice is based on intuition and experience.’

Jost Munster, similar works in 'Zig Zag'

The work in this show examines how artists are still discovering new visual ideas, through the complex and technically challenging process of applying paint and other materials onto a ‘blank canvas’. It is hoped that through the process of contrasting and comparing an opportunity is provided for debate and discussion with regard to visual language: a small critical forum for artists and audience to consider these works and the concepts, methods or systems behind their construction.'

Abstraction from China @ Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

2011-06-01T13:07:00.000+01:00

Look carefully at the painting below and think Ad Reinhardt..

Zhan Rui, 'Time for sex and love of No.72 Service Provider at the Sauna'
2010, Acrylic on canvas, 180×180 cm

This is an interesting exhibition at the Boers-Li Gallery Beijing. It is exhibiting the latest show by Zhan Rui entitled “The Stock Exchange, Weather, and Sex,” until 19th June 2011. This will include twelve paintings produced by the artist, all of which generally appear as abstract grids of nine by nine squares in simple colors of varying tone.

'Though this superficial abstraction may cause us to mistakenly relate these works to cold abstraction and color field painting, it is not, in fact, the aesthetic inclination of artist or audience that motivates their forms; they actually consist of documentation of the behaviors of people, society, and nature. In the works in this exhibition we see elements including the Chinese stock exchange, the weather in Wuhan, and the sex lives of people around the artist.

Zhan Rui uses red and green to represent the gains and losses of certain stocks, while triangles oriented in different directions represent the weather, and, different interviewees choose colors that relate to sex. After completing this foundational setup, the paintings automatically take form throughout a period of 81 days, a significant number in Chinese, for which the phrase “when all is said and done” is rendered colloquially as “nine and nine become one.”

Critic Sun Dongdong has commented that “As Zhan Rui introduces information into painting through a surface of modularity, so-called ‘painterliness’ becomes a form of useless information.” These paintings do not belong to the category of abstract painting that moves far from society and strives for pure sensation but rather stand as circumstantial recordings of information, drawing together the complexity of social information and the purity of abstract painting and perhaps ultimately reducing different social, environmental, and individual actions into colors and shapes that represent different forms of information. Through this method the elegant and orderly painting both manifests the anitya or impermanence noted in traditional cultural and makes immaterial the subjectivity and ‘painterliness’ of abstract art.'

You may also wish to check out this group exhibition entitled: 'Breaking Away-An Abstract Art exhibition.'

'Breaking Away'-An exhibition of Abstract Art' Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

Thomas Müller at Fruehsorge | contemporary drawings, Berlin

2011-06-01T11:51:00.000+01:00

Thomas Müller, 'Untitled' 2010, pencil chalk and ink on handmade paper, 160 x 115 cm

It's the last couple of days of Thomas Müller at Fruehsorge | contemporary drawings, Heidestrasse, Berlin, next to the contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof. This exhibition will run until 3rd June 2011.

Muller is an artist who works in abstraction and only uses the medium of drawing, and I can't think of a better place for an exhibition than the Fruehsorge. He has shown at the New York Drawing Centre and in the exhibition “Linea, Linie, Line” at the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations extensive drawing overview in Bonn. His work is also present among numerous German and international collections such as Kunsthalle Hamburg, Pinakothek der Moderne München, the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. In 2010 Müller was nominated for the Fondation Guerlain’s renowned “Prix de dessin contemporain”.

Müller's work explores 'the substance and nature of drawing and the drawing process itself, which materializes as a stroke or trace on the page and means the line doesn’t depict nor describe but becomes the subject matter itself.' What is also interesting is the use of such diverse materials such as chalk, ink, oils, acrylics, ballpoint pen, colour and led pencil and yet he retains a coolness to the final image in that he doesn't make that use of the materials the main thing about it. He explored the space of the picture plain with minimal markings in a rythmn of interwoven grids and wave-like structures, that have a zen like quality. Gorgeous..

Wang Guangle 'Coffin Paint' @ Beijing Commune, China

2011-05-27T09:42:00.000+01:00

Wang Guangle 'Coffin Paint' oil on wood, 2011

I thought this piece might interest people. The first solo show of Wang Guangle at Beijing Commune, China. This will be the second exhibition of Wang Guangle at Beijing Commune and shows his strong monolithic forms of abstraction. 'The piece shown in this exhibition took a month-long for Wang Guangle himself to work it out. Compared to his first solo show at Beijing Commune in 2009, this representation carries his practice further.

Wang Guangle began to attract wide attention with his series painting 'Terrazzo', and 'Coffin Paint', his later series of painting about time, deepens the impression of his art on his audience. The restrained, fundamental practice of a non-narrative practice of art in the 'Terrazzo' series has developed into a calm meditation on life, something destined to fade away finally. This is not a gradual progression of his art from one phase to another, but rather, something abstracted and distilled from the experience of “living through”.

Wang Guangle 'Coffin Paint' (detail) oil on wood, 2011

In the 'Coffin Paint' series, the accidental dots protruding from the surface are hints of the slow progression of the artist’s work of “experiencing”, through which Wang Guangle appreciates the meaning of “time” over and over with continuous, mechanical repetition of a same movement on one surface. And the status and aesthetics of such a process is perceived by the viewers on the finished “Coffin Paint”. The form of time, culture and history is understood and revealed in the process of Wang Guangle’s partial covering of each layers of paint on his paintings. The work he shows this time in the solo show at Beijing Commune carries his uniformed process of form to a further extend. In the repetitive, uniformed process the artist conducts for form, the new aesthetics in his art practice seems to become more certain and absolute.

Wang Guangle was born in 1976 in Fujian province, China. He graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, of Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2000, and now works and lives in Beijing. From the Terrazzo series to the Coffin Paint series, Wang Guangle becomes more assured in his drills of form and pushes his study even further. His works has been shown extensively in museums and gallery both in China and abroad. Besides painting, Wang Guangle’s creation also includes installation and other forms of art. He is one of the most potential young artists nowadays in China.'

Support Japanese Artists

2011-05-19T07:38:00.000+01:00

Please support this auction if you can: The auction aims to raise money which will go to Japanese artists to help them rebuild after the recent earthquakes. Galerie Appel in Frankfurt has many artists that work in an abstract manner, many of whom have donated artworks for the auction.
More info: www.galerie-appel.de/

Should any artists wish to take part in the auction, the details of the auction are as follows:

5 Sept. 2011 mount the exhibition for viewing before the auction, at the Museum of angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main

6 – 10 Sept. exhibition auction pre-view

11 Sept. auction of the artworks

12 Sept. dismantling the exhibition

Artists keen to participate can post their artworks, listing the details (name, size in cm, technique, year) in July.

More information can be obtained from: vandermade@gmx.de and angelika.gilberg@gmx.de
Show the love.