Galerie b2

Abstraction in art has a complex history: Expression and reception are full of contradictions and obstacles. A transmission into the present can only be successful within the framework of a revision. Abstraction does not confine itself to a manifest, but instead is versatile and interpretable, which is why it survived not only as a quote but as a relevant contemporary expression.

In contradistinction to the time of origin of abstraction, visual culture today is teeming with abstract images and terms. It is mainly technical, medical, mathematical-statistical information that brings forth abstract images and allegories. At the same time, abstraction may also serve as an expression of productive trial in the field of art: approach and material, process and form, and subject and motif are put to the test. In this sense abstraction is not a translation, but proof of an independent reality. Exhaustion implies an exhaustive approach to production: to work on something continually until it has

seemingly encompassed all formal variables. In this way exhaustion may also be recognized as an act that defies the resource-saving economy of means and the simple logic of rationality and production. Simultaneously, abstraction can imply sensuality: a realm between experience and inspiration. Not a record of performance indicating used energy, but specification and revision, aggregation and permeation, reduction and reproduction. At this point exhaustion connects to abstraction, which simultaneously varies in structure and form, expression and appearance, and constantly debates notions of meaning and material. In the withdrawal of clear interpretation and the exhaustion of resources a contradiction is rooted.