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The problem with abstraction is its open-endedness, which interestingly enough is the same quality that makes it useful. Through the fragmentation of form, disruption of recognisable imagery and a deep analysis of basic principles of art, abstraction can offer an avenue through which to explore complex ideas.
Walking into an exhibition titled In Search of Life one would be forgiven to expect a hypothesis on some of life’s most challenging questions — grief, loss, tragedy, joy and hope. But then again to read any art in terms of absolutes — good, bad, useful, terrible — is perhaps to miss the point completely.
Nestled between antique stores, an African artefact market, the oldest art organisation in Cape Town (AVA gallery) and a quaint cafe, Eclectica Contemporary is a gallery I’ve come to associate with figurative realism. Of the seventeen artists that make up its stable (as per the gallery website), roughly ten are artists working with the figure on canvas.
Although articles have recently surfaced analysing the rise and fall of figurative painting, exhibitions across Cape Town, since the start of this year, suggest that artists and galleries are not yet ready to denounce the form — there are many examples; Jody Paulsen’s solo exhibition, Open Arms at SMAC, Steven Allwright’s stripe stripe: a miscellany of portraits and potted exotics at 99 Loop, Candice Breitz’ White Face at Goodman, Having but little Gold: Berni Searle at Norval Foundation, Gregory Olympio’s Ligne at blank, Deborah Poynton’s Vertigo at Stevenson, Dominique Cheminais’ Things Done While Dreaming at THK and When We See Us at Zeitz Mocaa; all foreground the figure in one way or the other; from realist depictions of everyday life to absurdist and surreal images of figures floating in space.
In Search of Life, on view until 7th June, reflects an interesting pivot from the kinds of exhibitions typically staged at Eclectica Contemporary, which tends to favour realism. The exhibition attempts to stage an inquiry into the relationship between art and nature through geometries and abstract patterns — and what emerges is doubt. Where there is doubt, to use the language of scholars David Hilderbrand and Douglas Anderson, we call into question what we see. Call it, generative doubt or productive doubt. Useful doubt, perhaps. “Doubt is an experiential signal that there is a need to reconsider and revise our ways of understanding,” suggest Hilderband and Anderson. That is to say;
is it possible that a combination of shapes, colour and form can stand-in for memory, the subconscious, landscapes and history? If so, how do we show this?
The architecture of the Eclectica Contemporary is such that it spatially divides the show into three parts — the front room where Georgia Lane and Yasmine Yacoubi’s paintings are punctuated with a minimalist sculpture by artist Anthony Lane; a corridor on which Anthony Lane’s colourful wall-based sculptures illuminate the room; and finally the back room where Lars Fischedick’s optical illusions are mounted. The exhibition masterfully showcases a range of techniques — spontaneous sweeping gestures in Yacoubi’s work, arrangements of colour in Lane’s and whirling masses of acrylic and resin in Fischedick’s art. Colours and textures take on varying densities and saturations at different moments.
Writing in the introduction to the book, Abstraction (2013), author Maria Lind posits that although abstraction — as a movement popularised by the first generation of abstract expressionists in the late 40s to mid-’50s who sought to reject traditional and rational artmaking practices — can easily seem an obsolete or redundant artistic strategy, but there are a number of reasons to return to it. Lind notes that; “as an artistic and intellectual practice, with multiple expressions beyond the visual arts, one of abstraction’s key characteristics is the capacity for self-reflection.”
I take this to mean that we come to it not only to understand the world around us but ultimately to find ourselves. In this sense, abstraction is unrestricted and open. In the work of Lane, abstraction finds expression as a balance between line and harmonious colour. In hue, her paintings Inner Soul, Philosophy B and Philosophy C, are reminiscent of the Swedish abstract modernist Hilma AF Klint who used warm and delicate oranges, reds and browns in her paintings and who understood colour as language, able to communicate ideas, thoughts and feelings. Closer to home, the paintings recall the works of David Koloane whose compositional style reflected near abstract renderings of the Joburg skyline — vivid and glowing rectangles and circles that stand in for buildings and traffic lights.
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