I always love going to the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery. Challenging exhibitions & exhibits in a great exhibition spaces. 'Somewhat Abstract' was really interesting, virtually every significant artistic movement since the Second World War is touched on in this major exhibition drawn from The Arts Council’s own national collection.
Spanning seven decades of art made in Britain, Somewhat Abstract shows the work of 70 artists, eight of them Turner Prize winners.
Abstract art is the exhibition’s starting point. Yet as its title suggests most of the art works are near-abstract, rather than truly abstract. They are works in which the world has undergone a transformation. The image has lost its definition to become something else, while still retaining a sense of where it came from.
Abstract art is generally non-pictorial. The word abstract is also used to describe a thought or theory that is removed from concrete facts and circumstances. This includes the systems, models and diagrams that we use to explain the world, or control it.
John Hoyland, Red Over Yellow, 18.9.73, 1973
For this reason 'Somewhat Abstract' reflects ideas and perspectives outside of art itself. It alludes to nature and landscape, architecture and technology, history and power, modelling and map-making. Its artworks consider social and economic systems, class and gender, bodily experience and existential questions, while the scales it deals with range from the macro to the micro. It includes paint on canvas and bronze sculptures, both staples of earlier abstract art.
However it also includes near abstract photography, together with artworks made from resin, plasticine, pig’s blood, burnt objects – and a computer driven chandelier synced with a morse code monitor, signalling a text by the avant garde musician John Cage through magnificent crystal.
In the mid 20th century abstraction and representation were seen as opposites, with artists forced to take sides. This old distinction no longer holds true, with many contemporary artists moving nimbly in and out of abstraction. Most of the work in this exhibition belongs in the more ambiguous spaces between “isms” familiar from textbook art histories. Abstractions now shape our world, from minimalist architecture to global finance. Even the all pervasive digital image is formed from abstract squares of coloured light, if you get close enough.
My new discoveries were the work of Wolfgang Tilmans. I have come across his work previously but seeing the pieces on display in somewhat abstract have me hooked. The colour and intensity of the pieces were amazing and the head turning imagery of 'Dan' was mesmerizing.
Wolfgang Tillmans, paper drop (London), 2008
http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=772
Tillman’s pushes his post-conceptualist point home relentlessly. The image above shows another variation on the theme which is to shift from photographs of folded photographic paper to actual folded photographic paper, sealed up in perspex boxes to invoke the aesthetic magic of the art museum vitrine which can transform almost anything into a precious object.
Wolfgang Tilmans. 'Dan' 2004 - head-turning snaps by Tilmans
Cerith Wyn Evans, 299.792,458 km/s, "Diary: How to improve the world (you will only make matters worse)", continued 1968 from ´M´ writings ´67-´72 by John Cage, 2003, Chandelier (Venini Quadratti), flat screen monitor, Morse code unit, computer.
Evans has created a beuatiful language carrying chandelier - Language is definitely of crucial importance here: a huge, blinking Murano chandelier in the foyer sends texts from John Cage's "M. Writings '67-'72" in Morse. Wyn Evans relies on a redundant communication technology to encode Cage's notes. They are transmitted into urban space day and night. Only a few will decode these messages; for the rest, they will remain hidden in the sea of lights. Thus Wyn Evans programmed a chandelier to transmit a fragment of literature in Morse code. The first, in London, used a text from the mystic poet William Blake. For subsequent installations he has added more chandeliers and programmed other writing.
Peter Lanyon took up gliding to experience the
elements of air and water off the Cornish coast. 'Soaring
Flight', the title of his abstract expressionist canvas, says it
all.
Amikam Toren, Received Wisdom, 2006
Amikam Toren, ‘Received Wisdom’, Plywood, Metal & Vinyl, 2006: Toren’s amusing piece also examines ideas about ‘official’ knowledge and the transmission of accepted ideas, although in a slightly less tortuous manner than Latham’s. Here, he employs an adaptive, furniture-based approach to the Duchampian Readymade, (which isn’t so unusual these days), adapting a lecture theatre chair to make his point. By laminating numerous layers of plywood onto the seat’s integral table surface, (abstracting it in the process), Toren extrudes a towering edifice of knowledge or a manifestation of accumulated study, (I suppose). If not exactly the most complex idea in the world, it does result in an intriguing and amusing object that made me stop and think, at least for a moment or two.
Bridget Riley, Movement in Squares, 1962
Art students past and present probably associate Whiteread’s M.O. with those drawing exercises depicting the spaces between objects, but I always found them to be a philosophical, as well as formal investigation. Certainly, the simplest ideas are often the best, as is demonstrated here. Although familiar, this row of casts still has the power to activate its surroundings and each acquires a gorgeous inner glow, itself implying a spatial dimension, through the use of transparent, amber-coloured resin
John Latham, ‘Shaun II’, Mixed Media, 1958: Although this wall-based piece involves canvas and black spray paint, it can’t really be categorised as a painting. Collaging together Latham’s trademark charred books and sections of plumbing, it’s actually pretty characteristic of his highly conceptual assemblage work.
Cathy De Monchaux, ‘Clearing The Tracks Before They Appear’, Steel, Brass, Enamel, Muslin, & Ribbon, and, ‘Ferment’, Lead, Steel & Velvet, 1988: Both these pieces are wall mounted and demonstrate, in different ways, her obsessive, erotically charged approach to sculpture. Employing 3D CAD and the kind of filigree intricacy one might expect from a deranged jewelry designer, De Monchaux creates works of disturbing Freudian beauty. Superficially, they remind me slightly of H.R. Geiger’s twisted SF designs, but more interestingly, appear to explore the relationship between (abstract) material qualities and psychosexual impulse at the heart of all fetishism
Mark Lewis, ‘Children’sGames, Heygate Estate’, 35mm Film Transferred To DVD, 2002:
A similar exploration of unfashionable social policy, based on essentially abstract ideas, underpins Mark Lewis’ excellent short film, (also, coincidentally, set in London’s Elephant & Castle district). His steady-cam glides effortlessly around the ramps, elevated walkways and communal open spaces of the recently demolished Heygate Estate with an air of palpable artificiality. Completed in 1974, and with a latter-day reputation for crime and social deprivation, The Heygate was, for many, symbolic of all that went wrong with the social/housing policies of Post-War Concensus. However, many of the residents felt rather differently and, predictably, the current redevelopment plans feature only a fraction of the affordable housing that once occupied its Modernist blocks.
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