Publication | Abstrakt/Abstract by MMKK | Toon Verhoef

Deliberately running contrary to the general focus on "new figurative" painting, the MMKK is compiling a historical thread of artistic abstraction in the 21st century. The exhibition will include 25 internationally distinguished artistic positions of the second and third post-1945 generations. The artists work at the boundary lines in the Modern Movement, exploring abstraction from new angles and without pathos. In abstract conception – in painting, sculpture and room installations – many of them have recourse to the visual repertoire of historical models, reflecting the ideas of the Classical Modern and its influence on the 20th and 21st centuries.

Conventional attributions are made manifest, and the artist's position and artistic concept are critically questioned, together with conditions of reception and the production process itself. In particular, the position of the artist as author or creator is condensed and endowed with meaning far beyond the post-modern gesture of the quotation. All the works stand out by virtue of their unpretentious openness to abstract imagery. Intrinsic elements such as form, surface, colour, light, materiality and space function as symbols with implied significance and a challenge to come to grips with the content. Revealed here are contemporary cultural representational strategies which bring up to date the central themes of modern aesthetic discourse.