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The first major U.S. solo exhibition for Turner Prize–winner Tomma Abts is an impeccable introduction to her work. The 14 spaciously hung canvases, dating from 1999 to 2007, display her trademark proportions (18 ⅛" x 15"), materials (acrylic and oil paints) and interest in abstract paintings that mine the tension between form and content. Considering such unvaried parameters, this may seem like a game plan fated for repetition (or worse, tedium), but Abts proves otherwise.
While certainly not spectacular (the tones are muted, the mood is subdued), each piece packs an intellectual punch. In fact, their potency is intimately linked with their earnest and urgent claim for discovery. Like many abstract artists who preceded her, from Piet Mondrian to Robert Ryman, Abts reinvigorates the medium by reducing it to its basic elements: color, line, flatness. Her approach is characterized by overlapping diagonals, curving arcs and fragmented labyrinths, which act like seismic shifts willfully disrupting any notions of painting’s irrelevance. To further stress its continuing consequence, Abts carefully superimposes thin layers of paint, creating a textured, shallow relief that acts like an architectonic foundation for the patterns above.
One reason that Abts’s pieces are so successful is that she maintains an irresolvable tension between the ballast of the support and the activity on its surface. Unlike other contemporary artists who merely pronounce abstraction’s return, Abts realizes it for a new era.
Catherine Steinmann
Thu, May 08, at 10:28am
Excellent exhibit by Tomma Abts and great article on the work.
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