Installation view
November 25 – December 15, 2009
This group exhibition Abstract 09 at Atelier Rondo in Graz, Austria was initiated by German artist Frank Altmann, currently artist-in-residence in Graz.
Abstract 09 is investigating contemporary artistic strategies and practices in the realm of abstract art in general and reductive art in specific. All participating artists, Frank Altmann, Marita Fraser, Alex Lawler, Steffi Alte and Tilman explore the aesthetic qualitiesof abstraction, its form of representation and the relevance of the reductive language in present times; its innovations and meaning in todays world.
In Frank Altmann`s paintings we can see an occupation with geometric forms. What appears as an appropriation and quotation of geometric forms know within the history of Modern Art is not meant as such. Altmann rather explores geometric patterns inherent to stylistic modes of pre-modern artistic production revealing the idea that a reductive language was developed and used long before our times and days and was integral part of culture.
A similar subject is presented in his Dia-projection Abstract 08. In his exploration of the abstract image he focuses on images and forms found in daily life objects, in this case packaging materials or shopping bags, which can offer a universe of a pictorial language inherent to Modern Art. What appears as a slide-show documenting the history of abstract painting used in lectures are actually carefully chosen details of a graphic language surrounding us on a daily base.
Tilman’s objects, construction and architectural interventions point us to the process of seeing itself. Besides an aesthetic artistic language which has its roots in certain reductive styles developed over last century, his work offers a far-reaching construct of possibilities to participate in the process of perception. By introducing a multitude of means he overcomes the aesthetic overtone and attempts to lure the spectator into the work and herewith gives an opportunity to re-define ones own position in a physical, mental, psychological manner towards the here and now.
Steffi Alte’s objects reveal an occupation with the dialog of reductive sculpture and the found object. In the exhibited object `Untitled, we can clearly see two elements, here a well crafted steel-structure and second an obviously found object, scratched and mistreated by its daily use, contradicting each other on the one hand but then mended together on the other. We can detect a dialogue between artistic attitude and the charm of the everyday-object combined with lightness of a sense of humor.
Alex Lawlers multi-media practice examines the formal and aesthetic qualities of Post-Minimalism through the lens of ideas such as sensation, memory and the subconscious. He seeks to remove the minimalist object from its self-reflexive history, and place it firmly into the world of lived experience. His recent works have sought to position painting as ‘living past its own supposed death, which is therefore continually struggling to come to terms with its own existence’. This sense of anxiety is critical to Lawler’s practice, in which he seeks to invent ‘situations’ of function.
In these situations ‘painting’ mimics other non-painting objects, as a way of living through the crisis of its own identity.
He often applies his working mode in cooperation with Martita Fraser as seen here in the collaborative work ‘We have reached our destination’. Marita Fraser’s work is questioning forms of representation in general and more precise in the realm of abstraction. In her approach she seeks the form of the real in comparison to the forms of traditional representation and precisely this ontological ambition gives abstract painting relevance today. In her work she undertakes the effort to re-calibrate abstract paintings non-representational sensations in order to produce a non-spiritual form, a sensation that constructs the real through a material diagram. In this way abstract painting can re-engage with living processes and purge itself of the desire for the beyond. Her recent works explores two such strategies, it connects abstraction to the physicality of the material and it constructs abstract diagrams of the material unconscious.
