WASSILY KANDINSKY

Abstract Explorations charts a century of abstraction from its revolutionary beginnings through thediverse exploratory approaches of artists today. With artworks in various mediums and scales, ithighlights visual and conceptual correspondences within a range of painting and drawing practicesspecific to working on paper.

The development of abstraction in the first decades of the twentieth century was one of modernism’smost radical breaks with convention, birthing entirely new modes of art making. A painting in oiland gouache from Fernand Léger’s radically innovative Contrastes des formes series (c. 1913) comprisesa dense array of overlapping cylindrical, cubic, and planar elements, its highlights and shadowscomplicating what might have been considered an image of three-dimensional form; extending thespatial inventions of Analytic Cubism, Léger entirely abandons the depiction of the external world.Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer of abstract art, painted Réciproque (1935) in Paris, where he relocated in1933 after the dissolution of the Bauhaus. In a dance of precisely defined geometric and biomorphiccomponents, Kandinsky envisions a dynamic synthesis of suspended forms and reciprocal forces.

Mid-century works in the exhibition trace the advancement of new visions in keeping with theinnovations of their era. An untitled 1957 work in pencil by Cy Twombly radically extends thepossibilities of gestural abstraction through allusions to—and negations of—acts of writing anddrawing, achieving an expressive balance of order and chaos. Helen Frankenthaler’s vigorous oil-on-paper painting Shore Figure (1959) employs a palette and brushwork that evoke sea and sand whileavoiding their literal representation.

Works by contemporary artists disclose new possibilities for abstraction, extending a century-longconversation. The transformative quality of Brice Marden’s approach to painterly and calligraphicform is apparent in Drawing for Lois (1992–93), Rockery (2002), and Stele Drawing 3 (2007),demonstrating the centrality of drawing to his practice. In an untitled work from 1997, Rudolf Stingelapplies a vivid scarlet oil pigment to black paper through a tulle screen, the resultant variations intone and texture evoking elemental transformation. Composed with a cardboard box, papier mâché,acrylic paint, and steel, an untitled 2012 work by Franz West conjoins attributes of paper, painting,and sculpture. Made with paintstick, etching ink, and silica on two sheets of handmade paper,Richard Serra’s richly textured Diptych #9 (2019) resonates with the material and performative natureof his oeuvre.

The power of color remains a key component for abstractionists today. The harmonies of brushworkand color in an untitled 2019 gouache painting by Stanley Whitney are structured by a call-and-response interplay between the systematic nature of the artist’s compositional approach and theexpressive freedom of its realization. Made during the 2020 pandemic, Rachel Whiteread’s vibrantlyhued ink drawings iterate geometric forms to create spatially complex networks. In a work from 2021,Katharina Grosse uses a spray gun to apply acrylic paint in layered, diffused, and gestural modes.The bands of green, red, yellow, blue, and ochre are interrupted by botanical matter, with ribbonliketendrils forming stencils that alternately reveal the white of the paper and shifting traces of variedpigments.

A selection of works from 2022 by Albert Oehlen emphasizes heterogeneity of line and structure,juxtaposing freely improvised linear vectors and washes of ink, pencil, and watercolor in restrictedpalettes. Collaging fragments of the resulting passages into new compositions, Oehlen challenges theviewer to evaluate their disjunctions and continuities. The vigorous graphite marks in a 2023 drawingby Sterling Ruby converge at the work’s center, channeling centripetal and centrifugal energies. RickLowe’s Untitled (Domino Studies) (2023) is modeled in part after games of dominoes, their imbricated,directional paths and nodes suggesting the organization of urban maps. In this way, Lowe employsabstraction to meditate on the social nature of his practice.