Paths of abstract painting
28 February - 29 June 2008




In spring 2008 the BA-CA Kunstforum is showing an exhibition of around 70 pictures associated with the development of abstract painting. The timeline ranges from pioneers of modern art - Kasimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky - the exponents of abstract expressionism (Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock) to contemporary examples (Gerhard Richter, Brice Marden, Sean Scully). The exhibition is structured into various skeins, interweaving the history of development with stylistic and aesthetic criteria, also questions of technique. It throws light on affinities, traditions and relations between artistic works of various generations, so as to underline the elemental status and modernity of abstraction for painting.

The step-by-step rejection of objective reality eventually meant the dissolution of the painting, its "death". Although artists like Malevich, Rodchenko and Ad Reinhardt have repeatedly sounded out the limits of painting, and although the end of painting has been prophesied time and again, new options and ways of painting non-objectively have always emerged. Beyond the pale of intellectual radicalness and conceptual asceticism, we can find a rich spectrum of examples for this. After the end of the modern movement, abstraction has been released from purist dogmas, strictly formal guidelines and Utopian world pictures. Artists have extended the concept of abstraction to achieve more freedom for painting - for instance through association, quotation or reflection of "nature". The motif of the landscape also plays a decisive role in the early history of abstract art, when the Impressionists - despite all realism - defined the panel painting as a flat field of colour. Claude Monet's abstracted Water Lily paintings consequently make him the father figure of this exhibition.

The selection of works concentrates on the sensuous power of the "painterly element" within the classic, rectangular picture frame. Factors such as monochrome, facture, process, colour field, geometry and construction play a superordinate role.

The exhibition also puts the spotlight on contemporary abstract painting in Austria; it is placed in an international context, underlining its significance beyond its own region and national tradition.


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BA-CA Kunstforum
Freyung 8
1010 Wien
Austria
TEL :
office@ba-ca-kunstforum.at
www.ba-ca-kunstforum.at/