Ocula Report ‘An Opera for Animals’ at Rockbund Art Museum 19 Jul 2019 : Penny Liu for Ocula An Opera for Animals was first staged at Para Site in Hong Kong between 23 March and 2 June 2019, with works by over 48 artists and collectives that use opera as a metaphor for modes of contemporary, cross-disciplinary art-making. The exhibition's second iteration takes up a large portion of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai (22 June–25...
Ocula Conversation Mandy El-Sayegh: Productive Ambiguity Moving across installation, painting, drawing, and writing, Malaysia-born and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores the political, social, and economic complexities of humanity, using a mosaic of information—from advertising slogans and pornographic imagery to newspaper articles—that she subjects to processes of layering,...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
Tomma Abts makes complex paintings and works on paper whose subject is ultimately the process of their creation. She begins each work with no preconceived composition and idea, and without preliminary sketches. Guided largely by intuition, she nevertheless works within precise parameters. The paintings' evolution is evidenced by ridges and uneven texture—the result of methodical overpainting and reworking of the image. While abstract, the works are still illusionistic, rendered with sharp attention to shadows, three-dimensional effects, and highlights that defy any single, realistic light source. The resulting canvases convey balance and movement, while maintaining a sense of uncertainty, which seems akin to memory.
Born in 1967 in Kiel, Germany, Abts studied at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin from 1988 to 1995.
Related Press Tomma Abts CHICAGO Art in America : 1 January 2019 The thirty-two small, abstract paintings in Tomma Abts's show, which the Art Institute co-organized with the Serpentine Galleries in London, recall what Ezra Pound said he was trying to do with his short imagist poems: ...
Related Press Tomma Abts’ intriguing paintings contain infinite worlds Hyperallergic : 11 July 2018 The stark white walls of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery are dotted with colourful eruptions, each contained within a 48 x 38 cm canvas, the trademark format of the painter Tomma Abts. Their small size pulls the viewer in closer until we become intimately engaged with each concentrated schema. In their clearly delineated, geometric formations the...
Related Press Duncan Campbell Turner Prize Winner 2014 Anita Singh for The Telegraph UK / 1 December 2014 : 2 December 2014 Duncan Campbell is the winner of this year’s Turner Prize with a 54-minute film that even the chairman of the jury described as “a bit baffling”. Campbell’s film, It for Others (2013), is a montage of Marxist economics, contemporary dance, comedy ketchup bottles, African tribal masks and images of the IRA member Joe McCann.
Related Press Dear Painter … Frieze : 1 February 2012 What does the term 'abstraction' mean to non-figurative painters working today? I spoke to five artists - Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Matt Connors, Charline von Heyerl and Bernd Ribbeck - all of whom make work grounded in process and materiality. There is a dissonance between the directness of their work and the fuzzier set of interests and...
