Manarat Al Saadiyat
Saadiyat Cultural District
Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The interpretation of form is a fundamental idea for the process of abstraction or absolute delineation. Does one begin from simple lines, to gradually work towards a distinguishable amalgamation of shapes? Alternatively, is a retinal examination stripped of its identifiable features, then translated to countable corners and sides? Such ruminations have been scrutinised by artists through the decades.
Our perspective now rests upon vibrant forms on a smooth plane, a suggestive arrangement of shapes that appear to resist its two dimensional surface. It is almost classic procedure - the departure from the realistic image, followed by sheer abstraction. In Bernhard Buhmann's kaleidoscopic composition, there is an unfurling of multiple geometric forms, gradually sweeping gradients and a multitude of hues.
We stray even further from here. What remains? Does only pure abstraction follow? Elisabeth Wild's collated magazine cuttings are now only alluring graphic elements that have lost their association to their glossy, luxury commodity counterparts. A manipulation and shifting of common forms constitutes a portion of her artistic practice, sometimes evoking Constructivist cityscapes, other times merely a dissection thereof.
With turbulent imagery indicative of impending danger, and woodcut prints that show where paint has pressed against canvas, Olaf Breuning returns to nature itself to express issues that concern our earth and society, of rapid climate change and global warming. An organic touch permeates Breuning's new work, in its gritty textures, and extends to the bends in Buhmann's paintings, then to Wild's thoughtful selection and placement of various paper fragments. There is no conventional, chronological process religiously followed, no known extreme - the only constant is the elegant undoing and reimagining of structure, color, and geometry.
