Representing Abstraction

Exhibitions/Events:

2014 – Representing Abstraction – Recent Drawings by Karen Lyons and Tim Dunbar
Parfitt Gallery, Croydon

Date:
2012 – 2014

Representing Abstraction was a collaborative exhibition project involving Karen Lyons and Tim Dunbar.

This was a joint project, but within the multiple approaches and distinct attitudes of each of the artists’ work there was a common thread which centres on a dialogue about the operations of representation and its relationship to abstract form and the processes of abstraction. The resulting exchange is investigated through the realm of drawing, its processes and its materiality. A playful approach is often exploited where drawing conventions are celebrated then subverted through a juxtaposition with alternative modes of reflective practice. Seemingly contradictory parallels are drawn, for example, between traditional representational or pictorial devices such as linear perspective, and modern geometric patternmaking; the contemporary commonplace is pitched against complex analysis of formal narrative; amorphous blobs are layered against carefully structured topographical measurement.

The role of representation suggests a verisimilitude in which a commonly acknowledged recognition plays a part. In this project, however, some of the content in these drawings remains elusively enigmatic and where personally derived elements are simultaneously revealed and concealed.
The work of these artists problematizes and critically questions the act of depiction, with its repertoire of substitutions as a way of representing internal and external realities and individually held knowledge and understanding.

Representing Abstraction makes specific reference to a page from Michael Fried’s essay ‘Shape as Form: Frank Stella’s New Paintings’ and page 8 from Briony Fer’s chapter ‘Imagining a Point of Origin: Malevich and Suprematism’ in ‘On Abstract Art’.
Representing Abstraction was further extended by a number of drawings derived from an interactive encounter with the floor of Jackson Pollock’s studio in May 2012 and a reproduction of the painting September by Gerhard Richter in Robert Storr’s book: “September: A History Painting by Gerhard Richter”, published in 2009.