Abstraction By Any Other Name, is an eight person show (this is Part One) states that these are painters “whose work’s initial appearance seems to present itself as variants of Abstract Expressionism, when in reality each artist has developed a distinctive basis from which to generate ideas about gesture, form and color.”
I can’t make heads or tails of the title of the show (riffing on Shakespeare’s “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” ) and I don’t think that anybody would see the works in this show initially as Ab-Ex.
Playing along though, what these painters do share is an improvisatory approach. I wonder if Cameron is saying that improvisation is the most basic element of Ab Ex?
Which is a very interesting idea.
Another connection is that these painters and many others are trying to compete with, refer to and make sense of the vast stream of images, images of images and visual languages that we are all inundated with. The results are confusing and is it even possible?
In Seven Times…(above) Jane Fine paints a vibrant color field with comix and graffiti overlaid, suggesting a post-apocalyptic landscape populated with architectural fragments, or perhaps the interior of the mind with scraps of memory. She tags this painting with an ornate sculptural Lombardic initial F*. The “ine’ is there too but it seems a poster has obscured it. It raises the question of whether we are looking at the pentimenti of a flat wall or a three-dimensional flooded ruin.
That tension exists in another of Fine’s paintings too: Gaslight, where grids, drips, doodles and constructions both deny and affirm dimensionality.
Kolodziej’s painted collages riff off pattern paintings, but more darkly. And perhaps there is a nod to Joan Snyder in the way he processes information into blocks. In Snyder’s last show she created a landscape by assimilating details into a garden of the mind. Kolodziej has generated a laboratory that imply cells, viruses, smears and scans.
A friend of mine asked the other day how much Covid was still affecting our lives and we proceeded to get lost in the weeds talking about it. Maybe it was that conversation that gave this painting an emotional component, a twinge of fear and sadness.
Scully paints swirls of brushstrokes that may seem to be abstract until the images start to appear. In Enchanted Garden a princess with a child materializes in the center, another standing woman maybe to her left, then huts, flowers, a boat, a bridge…
Sweet, maybe a bit too sweet for my taste, but I like it for creating a decentralized image that engages the viewer to actively search the painting. and discover it for themselves. I’d be interested to know how far along in the painting she is before she starts to see the figurative elements and develop them.
Shtini’s paintings are both repulsive and fascinating which might be their purpose. In 5 Dots the dots seem kind of silly, because I think he makes the point without them. However, I was moved by this image that I see as a tortured dog. In this and other Shtini paintings he presents the unknowability of other species and the pain they are in as we study them. Or that might just be the way I feel because I’m disturbed by his rather clinical approach.
In the September Brooklyn Rail, Phyllis Tuchmann poses a series of questions under the title Abstraction Now**. I assume that it is a coincidence that Cameron has given his own answers to some of her questions. I’ve decided to take on just one of them for now (and all of her questions are printed below).
- Is there an avant-garde? If so, what is its nature?
Firstly, I don’t think these artists (or others) are discussing, arguing, recognizing common interests or considering themselves as a group. I think Dan Cameron picked them because he sees some connection—a very important job of a curator and a critic—but not the same as an artist-generated movement that attacks the status quo.
Can we even recognize an avant-garde before the army moves in?
If there is such a group, artists that are interested in similar ideas and each other’s work, I wish someone would let me know.
—CNQ
**Phyllis Tuchman Abstraction Now, The Brooklyn Rail: September 2024
- Is there a sensibility to abstract artwork at this moment? If so, how would you characterize it?
- Is there an avant-garde? If so, what is its nature?
- Has the sensibility towards abstraction become academic? If so, what are its characteristics?
- Has the condition of abstract art changed? Has the acceleration of communication and the increased attention of social media made the pioneering abstract artists of yesterday into today’s academy? Has this affected the artist? Does the growth of art schools affect the abstract artists of the moment?
- Is there the same division between abstraction and representation as formerly? How has this relationship changed?