which its curvature begins. This small tilt transforms the painting into something else entirely: tombstones come to mind, as do simplified figures engaged in a kiss; this small alteration of the space in between yields an entirely different understanding, and not just visually: the imagination is immediately engaged in a different way, and symbolic and narrative interpretations, each according to the viewers own subjectivity, begin to emerge. This picture is playful in the most positive sense of the word.
Detail: Ruri Yi, Untitled (L01), 2019 ©️Ruri Yi
distances backward (or downward), depending upon the tonal value and saturation of a given color – in this particular case, the pink in the lower left dramatically recedes and the gray in the upper right less so. A dominantly lateral abstraction becomes a dimensional space, and the in-between spaces change from plane to thin air. That transformation from literal surface to representational space is even more dramatic when one or more of the shapes are tilted, if only slightly. Untitled L01 from 2019, features two vertical capsules which are cut off at the bottom of the canvas. The left-hand shape leans slightly right, touching its right-hand counterpart at the point at
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The fact that both of these artists found their way into abstraction via architecture is significant not only from the standpoint of shared sensibilities, but because it sidesteps the central dogma behind so much abstraction of the 20th century (hard-edged and otherwise) which is that abstract painting should refer to nothing outside of its own existence. As this notion became increasingly limiting and ultimately untenable it was soon obvious that it is impossible to make a picture that exists wholly outside human experience. There are many that abandoned abstraction after this realization became concrete. There are others, however, like the two artists in this exhibition, that arrived at more personal and subtle bargains with abstraction.