Making a Mark: Abstraction in the Ahmanson Collection
- Oct 1, 2022
- 1 min read
Updated: May 30
29 October 2022 - 1 March 2023
"The gathering of a group of paintings under the rubric of abstraction is not a benign curatorial conceit. Such an exhibition will, without a doubt, place its viewers in the uncomfortable position of being confronted by art objects rather than in control of them.1 Contemporary abstraction—whether it intends non-objectivity or non-representation, or exists outside of realism or representation altogether—sets one at odds with what one can see, or recognize, or physically intuit, confounding our expectations of an encounter with art. More than a century after painters, sculptors, mathematicians, and musicians began to chip away at the edges of the Western, Cartesian notion that we literally objectify and animate
the world with our gaze, this thinking still mediates and edits what we assume we know. Postmodernism’s complication of art’s values and meanings along with the ongoing enrichment that non-Western perspectives and practices continue to bring to contemporary art are starting to blur the line between the possessor and the possessed. But quite a bit of reprogramming is yet needed to expand and enrich our connection to things beyond “getting” them, in all senses of the term."
Excerpt from the essay “What is to replace the missing object?” byJennifer R. Gross
To view images from the show, click on the right arrow below.
Maja Lisa Engelhardt 1956 - The Eighth Day, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 82.75 x 137.75 inches Miranda Fengyuan Zhang Highland, 2021 Textile 32 x 30 inches Merrill Wagner 1935 - Untitled, 2002 Oil on linen 30 x 40 inches Christine Turner 1990 - steadily adding its subtractions, 2019 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches Linnéa Gabriella Spransy Ars Moriendi; Humility, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches Linnéa Gabriella Spransy Ars Moriendi; Pride, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches Zoë Paul 1987 - Soft Shapes II, 2016 Wool and thread on found fridge grill 30.5 x 28.35 inches Meg Lipke 1969 - Rombald's Moor, 2023-2024 Acrylic and oil on canvas over custom stretcher 60 x 72 i Erin Lawlor 1977 - Snake Charmer, 2019 Oil on canvas 15.75 x 11.8 inches Sheila Hicks 1934 - Regal Farlands, 2016 Wool, silk, and metallic fiber 9.25 x 11.759.4 x 5.3 inches Tim Hawkinson 1960- Caryatid, 2020 India ink on Yupo paper 146.5 x 60 inches Ale Groen Inside of Abstraction, 2018 Acrylic on plywood 48 x 48 inches Karel Appel 1921 - 2006 Birth of a Landscape #24, 1996 56 x 80 inches Heather Day 1989 - Sway, 2020 Signed and dated lower right Mixed media on canvas 56 x 48 inches Leonardo Drew 1961 - Number 243, 2020 Wood and paint 67 x 56 x 10 inches Sam Gilliam 1933 - 2022 Fold IV, 2014 Pigment based ink on handmade paper 27.5 x 46 inches Meg Lipke 1969 - Sample List, 2021 Acrylic on muslin with polyester fill, thread 22 x 14 x 3 inches Linnéa Gabriella Spransy Ars Moriendi; Pride, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches Liliane Tomasko A Dream of: Layered Vision, 2018 Acrylic and acrylic spray on linen 82 x 76 inches Patricia Treib 1979 - La Grotta (Palazzo Massimo), 2021 Oil on canvas 80 x 60.5 inches Genesis Tramaine 1983 - St. Obed, 2021 Acrylic, oil sticks, oil pastels, Puddy and the Holy Spirit Patrick Wilson 1970 - Crimson Dream, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 27 x 48 inches
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