Variations: Abstract Painting Today

Stephen Wozniak

A new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, entitled Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting Today, will be on view from August 24 until March 22 of 2015. It will feature dozens of the Museum’s diverse abstract works from such prominent international artists as Gerhard Richter, Jennie C. Jones, Diana Molzan and Christopher Wool. This comprehensive show, curated by LACMA’s Franklin Sirmans and Nancy Meyer, represents new works from this group of 29 vital contemporary artists, as well as pieces from the past, which demonstrate pioneering techniques and aesthetic languages used in the medium.

Abstract fine art has been created for centuries within several distinct cultural periods throughout the world. Now more than ever, this art acts as an important declaration of unique expression amidst the image-saturated, split-second arena of building-sized billboards, continuous online advertising, and the onslaught of social media. Many of the artists represented at the Variations exhibition have created distinct works in a variety of formats, beyond the three dimensions of the work, which often require viewer engagement over time.

All 43 pieces that comprise the exhibition have been placed in one of the largest gallery spaces within the Museum, likely to create an open, contradictory interplay among several of the more kinetic and intimate pieces on display. Many of the works, such as Analia Saban’s delicate, laser-sculpted, acrylic on canvas piece, Erosion, 2012, invite discreet investigations about materials, process and scale, while others, such as Mark Grotjahn’s rustic, bronze, fused reliquary, Untitled (Two Noses Out of the Shell Standing Flat), 2013, require in-the-round viewing to absorb its figurative “weight” and obscured iconography.

Another work, Jennie C. Jones’ End Measure, 2011, crafted from black acoustic panels and canvas, alludes to the closing of a musical sequence and quite literally reduces or eliminates any sound in and around its broad, dark surface. As such, the viewer must consider the sense of sound, or its lack thereof, and their participation in the overall experience of the work.

Other large scale works such as the nearly nine-foot long, autumn-hued, abstract painting St. Andrew, 1988, by German multiple-movement artist Gerhard Richter, inform the viewer as much about the artist’s process and experience of creating the work as their relation to its scale and creation.

Sirmans, LACMA’s Curator of Contemporary Art, known for organizing the Minimalist Blinky Palermo: Retrospective, 1964-1977 and Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, has gathered some extraordinary pieces from the permanent collection for Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting Today, which are certain to enact viewer dialogue alluded to in the exhibition title.

The artists whose works are included in the exhibition are: Markus Amm, Mark Bradford, A.K. Burns, Aaron Curry, Theaster Gates, Mark Grotjahn, Iva Geurorguieva, Sergei Jensen, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Rachel Lachowicz, Dashiell Manley, Julie Mehretu, Diana Molzan, Albert Oehlen, Alexandra Olson, Laura Owens, Anthony Pearson, Howardena Pindell, Gerhard Richter, Sterling Ruby, Analia Saban, Maaike Schoorel, Amy Sillman, Diana Thater, Lesley Vance, Mary Weatherford, Lisa Williamson, and Christopher Wool.

Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting Today will be on view at the LACMA from August 24, 2014 until March 22, 2015.