Detours through abstraction

23 July 2011 - 7 September 2011

This exhibition presents artists who engage with aspects of abstraction, but are not necessarily flag bearers for abstraction
 with a capital “A”. In the 21^st century, few artists would present such a fervent ideology. In fact, artists presented in Detours Through Abstraction may see themselves first as landscape painters, storytellers, image makers, and realists—or with no categorical allegiance whatsoever—rather than abstract artists. Still, featured artists engage in a variety of abstract approaches, or explore the unsteady ground on which abstraction has always found itself, even if such approaches are simply detours en route to another destination. Tony Garifalakis creates new narratives based on altering poster advertisements for movies, but his use of all-over black spraypaint that obliterates existing imagery brings to mind the monochrome paintings of the Modernist era. Rebecca Scibilia may begin her paintings with nods to popular culture using images and texts (DVD covers of popular Hollywood films are often a point of departure, for example); however, she often obscures overt references by burying her narratives under layers of paint and felt tip marker. John Bates’ landscape paintings are elegantly minimal and venture into the realm of colourfield painting and polychromatic camouflage patterning—simultaneously abstract and representational. Kitty Norster’s delicate, small-scale plaid paintings point to the conundrum that lies in much of abstract art: can abstraction be just another mode of representation? Are Norster’s works copies of existing plaid patterns in the world of textiles (and thus representational) or are they abstract patterns conjured by the artist? Abstraction can also be a distillation process where objects and images are reduced to a formal simplicity. Julian Martin’s pastel drawings exemplify this approach and reveal, like other artists in the exhibition, the janus-like nature of abstraction as it forever looks backward and forward towards realms of the real. Visual art that utilizes text as its central focus has always confounded critics privy to simple binary classifications like abstract versus representational. Is language an abstraction or a representation of thought and when artists get a hold of it, might language also be an image? Boris Cipusev ventures into just this sort of terrain with his inventive use of typography and his clever juxtaposition of words that conjure new meanings and associations through an economy of means—most of his felt-tip pen text drawings feature just two words. Kate Smith’s abstractions take to task the heroics of painting through an emphasis on small scale format, abject awkwardness, and use of found and discarded materials that are sometimes incorporated into the surfaces of her paintings. Smith often treats her paintings as sculptures, sometimes leaning them against walls or arranging them on floors alongside clusters of found and crafted objects—scattered installations that spill across space like sordid messes. In terms of method, Steven Asquith’s paintings might appear to have more in common with drawing rather than painting as the building blocks of his compositions are marks: lines, circles, hatches, and grids laid on top of arabesque spraypainted gestures that resemble graffiti. These are cryptic works that evoke early Modernism’s fascination with so-called “primitive” (in less politically problematic terms, Non-Western) art and culture, but Asquith’s imagery is wholly imaginary and non-appropriative.