Abstract art is one of the most important currents in the 20th century, it developed when a change was made to an objectless painting. Instead, the abstract style uses artistic values that are the culmination of the reduction of artistic language, including color, shape, texture, outline, and composition.This exhibition showcases a number of contemporary artists, famous for their abstract pieces. Artists with different styles, ideas and themes resulted in a vibrant exhibition. The artists take the abstraction to a whole individual place and draw together a wide spectrum of techniques and approaches.Some of the artists focusing on minimalism and geometric styles as Arild Askerland and Matthew J. Pitts, and some present more intuitive styles with multicolored palette as Taher Jaoui and Juan Pablo Villacura Vásquez, In addition to intuitive works, Dubi Ronen also creating a unique aesthetic by using of concrete material on the canvas used as a paint and sometimes as the canvas itself.The artists on display include Taher Jaoui, Tunisian artist who currently lives and works in Berlin, Jaoui’s compositions are built on an intuitive and an unconscious process.
Through a personal language in his compositions, he aims to stimulate the viewer’s feelings and imagination and let him build his own interpretation of the picture. He combines an aggressive use of color and texture with various combinations of oil, enamel, spray paint and charcoal on canvas.
Jaoui’s works show influences by African primitive art, graffiti, glitch art, COBRA movement as well as the philosophy and attitude of post-war abstract expressionism. Varying from simple forms and patterns over familiar shapes that are reminiscent of abstracted skulls, all the way to chalkboard-like scribble sections, the canvas surface becomes the workspace through which the artist exercises his ways of expression.The works of the British artist Matthew J. Pitts are painted in a minimalist style that emphasizes simple lines and their flow on the canvas combined with colorful harmony.
Don’t try to find some hidden message or agenda in Pitts’s paintings because his paintings exist as objects on their own. The titles are not descriptions of works or explainers of content. The painting is the content. “I enjoy the process of choosing titles for my paintings”. A title is used as a name or identifier of a painting. Often they say more about myself and the moment in time that they are made than they do about the content of the painting.Arild Askerland, an international artist, creates a complex interplay of shapes, colors, light, texture and structure that dances along the surface of his abstract expressionist images. He expresses a wonderful complexity in his compositions, made intelligible by a united language of line and color. His works invite the eye into the depths with subtle transparency.Dubi Ronen, an Israeli artist, paints and creates with concrete, the material is a central motif in his work, the concrete brings with it aesthetic properties of natural stone, matte light reflection, typical color and at the same time loaded with other meanings that deal with difficulty, grayish and fragile Israeliness.
The cement powder is mixed with other materials and becomes an ointment with which the artist paints on canvas from on a wooden frame in large formats. Concrete is the color and sometimes concrete is the surface on which the artist paints with his hands, pencils and also drowns metal parts.
The concrete is very hard but also breaks easily, it has contrasts that occupy the artist – masculinity versus femininity, transient versus eternal. The subject of the works ranges from dealing with the landscape of Israel to geometric drawing.Juan-Pablo Villacura Vasquez is a Münster based artist, his works present abstract expressionism combined multi-Composition of pre-Columbian horror art.
His painting strives to express the energy needed for resilience.
The patterns that Vasquez uses come from eclectic sources, and he arranges them intuitively until he feels that the energy he was looking for exists in the work.
His works seem intimate and distant, multi-directional without hierarchy or disruption, organized accumulation against distraction, against reduction – all in order to reach the right energy.