Abstraction narrates the story, but what it does more is provide a tangible emotional experience to the viewers. To witness this similar experience, Gagosian has announced a two-part exhibition, Social Abstraction, in Beverly Hills and Hong Kong from July 18 to August 30. Featuring works by Kyle Abraham, Kevin Beasley, Allana Clarke, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Alteronce Gumby, Lauren Halsey, Kahlil Robert Irving, Devin B. Johnson, Rick Lowe, Eric N. Mack, Cameron Welch, and Amanda Williams, the exhibition explores the intersection of nonrepresentational form and social consciousness.
Featuring compositions that move between abstraction and figuration, they form shapes to portray landscape and cityscape with excellent rendering through color and textures. While the painting medium differentiates from oil and acrylics to ceramics, mosaics, resins, textiles, and even wigs, they all have one thing in common that they have been charged with a conceptual and cultural significance.
Having an epic height of twenty-eight feet in length, the painting, Cavafy Remains by Rick Lowe is dedicated to the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. With an intersection, nodes that evoke lettering, urban infrastructure maps, and domino games form, the artwork used a layered weave of vivid colors and intersecting lines. Other artworks, Untitled (A Meteor) and Untitled (Meteorite) show the expansive celestial scenes where the spectral colors emerge from the blackness field. In Untitled (Stars, Reflected), the artist portrays the mirrored effect of starlight and its refraction of the water surface. These pictures from Gavin show his exploration of the nocturnal subjects while conveying his perceptual and imaginative association with the night sky. Other artworks like CandyLadyBlack by Amanda Williams conjure the childhood nostalgia of treats; Congealed & Stuck by Devin B. Johnson shows fluid gestural brushstrokes of impressions of people and places from the artist’s mind; Zulu and Into Dreams of a Distant Journey by Alteronce Gumby incorporates agate and bismuth with acrylic paint and glass to bring a chromatic intensity to the works’ surfaces. Witness Me sculpted by Allana Clarke shows the notions of beauty, blackness, and body significance through impeccable technical craftsmanship.
There are other artworks, each with its own story and notions of beauty in the exhibition. Having started with a decent performance by the choreographer and dancer Kyle Abraham and members of his company on July 19 at 6 p.m. the art display is filled with creativity, sensibility, and delightful colors.
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