Abstraction

By Yunhee Min

I like to think of visual abstraction as an invitation. An invitation for a chance experience and as a resistance to meaning or interpretation. I approach abstraction as a relational dynamic, hence always involved in some sense of movement and time. In studio, making abstraction is anything but abstract. This making involves physical and bodily entanglement with materials and processes that evolve over time.

Color aligns with abstraction in its inherent multiplicity. It fascinates me to consider the infinitely complex and delicate contingency that makes our perception of color possible even as they constantly shift in ways that may not be perceptible. So, it is not surprising that color is also deeply aligned to the senses, and to the body.

Vitreous Opacities (Double Floor #2) is an example from the recent group of paintings on glass. Taking wet paint to the surface of glass, the work explores liquidity of paint, gesture, and color relationships as well as ideas of composition and transparency. The process of pouring, spilling, tilting, dripping of liquid paint feels as though they are on the verge of chaos, losing its edges and character as color and form. With time, I am left with a myriad of visual/chemical effects that are intensified through the luster of the glass.

Abstraction conjures distance at first glance. It is also a way to make new spaces to take place.

Recently, I was a captive in a hotel room in Berlin after having contracted Covid. During the ensuing days of isolation, I spent time reading. When I was asked to participate in this conversation about Asian-American Art, I couldn’t help wanting to retrieve the feelings of Badiou’s words on love. Profoundly built on experiencing otherness and difference, his thoughts offer ways to imagine and reimagine. Among other things, I thought about love in my own life, as a person, an artist and a maker. In Badiou’s words, “What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity?” (Alain Badiou with Nicolas Truong, In Praise of Love, 22)

I like to think of visual abstraction as an invitation. An invitation for a chance experience and as a resistance to meaning or interpretation. I approach abstraction as a relational dynamic, hence always involved in some sense of movement and time. In studio, making abstraction is anything but abstract. This making involves physical and bodily entanglement with materials and processes that evolve over time.

Color aligns with abstraction in its inherent multiplicity. It fascinates me to consider the infinitely complex and delicate contingency that makes our perception of color possible even as they constantly shift in ways that may not be perceptible. So, it is not surprising that color is also deeply aligned to the senses, and to the body.

Vitreous Opacities (Double Floor #2) is an example from the recent group of paintings on glass. Taking wet paint to the surface of glass, the work explores liquidity of paint, gesture, and color relationships as well as ideas of composition and transparency. The process of pouring, spilling, tilting, dripping of liquid paint feels as though they are on the verge of chaos, losing its edges and character as color and form. With time, I am left with a myriad of visual/chemical effects that are intensified through the luster of the glass.

Abstraction conjures distance at first glance. It is also a way to make new spaces to take place.

Recently, I was a captive in a hotel room in Berlin after having contracted Covid. During the ensuing days of isolation, I spent time reading. When I was asked to participate in this conversation about Asian-American Art, I couldn’t help wanting to retrieve the feelings of Badiou’s words on love. Profoundly built on experiencing otherness and difference, his thoughts offer ways to imagine and reimagine. Among other things, I thought about love in my own life, as a person, an artist and a maker. In Badiou’s words, “What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity?” (Alain Badiou with Nicolas Truong, In Praise of Love, 22)

By Ann Sew Hoy

I use abstraction to re-order reality because it’s not literal or representational, so you can sidestep a lot of assumed positions. With abstraction, materials can speak- here is a framework to engage energetic forces.
 
My current work, Cage/Grottos, are architectonic structures which have undergone massive stress, but still stand. To make them, I build cages using found metal: from industrial steel to dog crates. I then form clay around the cage. As it dries, it shrinks and cracks around the metal; in turn, during the kiln firing, the metal slumps and is warped by the obdurate clay. These pieces result from metal and clay wreaking havoc on each other, with the addition of transformational fire. In order to create the Cage/Grottos, I invite entropy, and release a lot of control over outcome. After the kiln firing, I remediate the metal and clay, now a site of transformation and ruin, into an ad-hoc shelter. Bleak and hopeful futures vie with one another in these works. My goal is to allow material to speak, revealing both social and personal truths.

By Tâm Van Tran

Having arrived in the US as a political refugee from Vietnam, my work is informed by the ideas of reinvention, transformation, healing and beauty or the idea of Reinvention filtered through the ground of selflessness and non duality. Because of the closures of swimming pools during Covid, I discovered swimming in the ocean. The experience of being out there alone in the ocean beyond the waves influenced my current works of cartooned land and sea animals. I’m interested in the parallels between the mind that opens up spaciously when one is at sea and applying it in my studio practice in relation to abstraction. While my current practice has figurative elements, I am never far from the belief that abstraction is inseparable from selflessness and the sensation of groundlessness.