Abstraction NOW:To Bend The Ear Of The Outer World @ the Gagosian.

To Bend The Ear Of The Outer World is an exhibition (currently showing at London's Gagosian galleries - spread over two sites, one in Grosvenor Square, the other on nearby Davies Street) with a subtitle and that subtitle, Conversations On Contemporary Abstract Painting, is a very apt one. At least in one respect as all the works showing are very much contemporary abstract paintings.

What there isn't much of, however, is a conversation. There's no information other than the names of paintings, who painted them, and when and even a look at the Gagosian's website doesn't offer up much. Which is partly a pity but also, partly, a joy. It lets us, the viewers, interpret the paintings ourselves so that's just what I'm going to do. Very inelegantly.

Starting with Cicely Brown's It's not yesterday anymore. Which, to be honest, is a fairly textbook/boilerplate abstract painting. It's how a critic of abstract painting might imagine an abstract painting to look.Lots of daubs, lots of colours, and no real sense of composition. It still looks good, everything - pretty much - in the show does, but it's not, for me, a highlight.

Cicely Brown - It's not yesterday anymore (2022)

Tomma Abts - Emko (2023)

It does, however, contrast quite nicely, dramatically even, with Tomma Abts' more geometrically precise, and aesthetically pleasing, Emko. It looks like it could be some architectural caprice, vaulting perhaps, but of course it's just some colour and some lines. Brice Marden goes for lines too. Squiggly ones. Almost like cave art reimagined for the online age.

Whereas Gerhard Richter, probably one of the biggest names on show here, goes for a sensory overload. Colour everywhere and yet the painting is still dark. It feel as if secrets may lie within its composition and it's entirely possible they do. Richter is that kind of artist. Of course, it's equally plausible that all you can first see is all you will ever see. The presentation is the message. These are impressive artworks, they'd look good hanging on your wall if you've got a nice big house, but you don't need to spend too long looking at them when in the gallery.

Brice Marden - Rivers (2021-21)

 

Gerhard Richter - Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) (2017)

 

Frank Bowling - Passtheball (2022)

Another big name on show is Frank Bowling (whom I've written about before). His Passtheball (a title I can't quite comprehend in relation to the painting) looks like the surface on some inhospitable alien planet. Scarred, pockmarked, unknowable. As such it seems appropriate that it sits opposite Vija Celmins' Night Sky #22 which looks like something you might see through a telescope or on a visit to the Planetarium.

Stanley Whitney owes more to the Sean Scully school of painting and both Suzan Frecon and Mary Heilman produce interesting, but hardly idiosyncratic, pieces. I preferred David Reed's slightly aquatic, slightly wallpapery, slightly queasy, acrylic. Though I'm not quite sure how it took seventeen years to complete!

 

Vija Celmins - Night Sky #22 (2015-18)

 

Stanley Whitney - Slow Walking (2022)

 

Suzan Frecon - persian mare mars (2022)

 

Mary Heilmann - Deep Water (2022)

Mary Heilmann - Dive Under (2022)

 

David Reed - #593-3 (2005-22)

 

Pat Steir - Rainbow Waterfall #6 (2022)

I was even more keen on Pat Steir's Rainbow Waterfall #6 and not just because I like rainbows and waterfalls (who doesn't?). There was something of the Clyfford Still about it and I'd like to have seen it blown up to the size of one of Still's huge imposing works.

David Hammons, whose work sits in a small room on its own - all lonely, has gone for a bit more of a conceptual vibe than any of the other artists on show and has covered up his painting with net curtains and some kind of plastic bag. It's the sort of trick Hipgnosis used to like to pull during their imperial phase of album cover design. I found it a bit frustrating. Perhaps that was the point?

 

David Hammons - Untitled (2019)

 

Jacqueline Humphries - MN+//ssss (2023)

 

Wade Guyton - Untitled (2021)

I wasn't detained long by Jacqueline Humphries unremarkable, grey, images (though I am still confused - perhaps by design - by the title) because I'd spotted Wade Guyton who, like Pat Steir, seems to have been channeling the spirit of Clyfford Still. There's something very rustic, very Americana, about his untitled 2021 piece. It's like paint peeling off a rusting barn somewhere in the middle of Indiana.

After typing that I thought I'd look up where Wade Guyton was from. His name suggests America and he is indeed American. But, better than that, he's from Indiana. Give yourself a pat on the back, Evans. You're either very good at this stuff - or very lucky.

 

Charline von Heyl - Circus (2022)

 

Christopher Wood - Untitled (2019)

 

Albert Oehlen - Martin Rev or Alan Vega (2022)

 

After Guyton's lovely piece of work, the paintings of Christopher Wood and Charline von Heyl, though fine, seem a little insipid. But Albert Oehlen manages to pull things back in the right direction with a messy explosion of a work that, for reasons unknown, pays tribute to the band Suicide. 

Laura Owens is an artist I can't quite my head around (and her appearance here didn't help me much either) but I was rather taken by Terry Winters' rave era vibrating egg and its surrounding dots and circles. Would make a nice album cover for The Orb or someone like that.

 

Laura Owens - Untitled (2023)

 

Terry Winters - Beginning Being an Engine (2022)

 

Mark Weatherford - The Garden Of Earthly Delights (2021)

 

Richard Aldrich - Untitled (2019-23)

 

Amy Sillman - Swipe (2022)

Mark Weatherford's washy daubs, Richard Aldrich's constructivism in a tornado, and Amy Sillman's almost cubist meanderings all made for pleasant diversions and Suzanne Jackson's Palimpsest Grit stood out by being the sole work in the show not wall mounted. A mixture of twine, string, silk, aluminium, mesh, and even 'detritus'. With Jackson, it seems, the media really is the message.

Helen Marden's After was a delightful honeyed yellow image that made me think of wasps and bees and Tomm El-Saieh seems to have also taken insects as an inspiration in her work Hornet. It made me think of pointillist painters like Paul Signac and Georges Seurat.

 

Suzanne Jackson - Palimpsest Grit (2022-23)

 

Helen Marden - After (2022)

 

Tomm El-Saieh - Hornet (2020)

 

Oscar Murillo - Manifestation (2020-22)

 

Jade Fadojutimi - And willingly imprinting the memory of my mistakes (2023)

 

Thilo Heinzmann - O.T. (2022)

The scrawling gets more frantic, even frenzied, with Oscar Murillo before calming down, a little with Jade Fadojutimi's watery, yet disturbed, landscape and Thilo Heinzmann's spidery O.T. I could see this one being used for the artwork of a Cocteau Twins album.

Ryan Sullivan's untitled work is a bit too murky and it didn't really speak to me, Nathalie Prevosty's Clepsydra lacks enough originality to make it stand out but Tauba Auerbach's Grain impressed. Even if it looked a bit like a deconstructed image of a spark plug from a motoring manual.

 

Ryan Sullivan - Untitled (2022)

 

Nathalie Provosty - Clepsydra (2023)

 

Tauba Auerbach - Grain - Standing Mandelbrot Quartet (Ventrella Variations) (2022)

 

John Zurier - Love Letter (2022)

 

Jennie C. Jones - Triple Bold Bar End Measure (2022)

 

Katharina Grosse - Untitled (2022)

John Zurier seems to deal in Rothko for beginners, Jennie C. Jones failed to impress this visitor, but Katharina Grosse provided the exhibition with a delightfully wispy, and unashamedly lightweight untitled image.

Julie Mehretu and Mark Bradford were bolder and darker but equally impressive and Mark Grotjahn seems to be possessed by the spirit of Jackson 'Jack the Dipper' Pollock (or perhaps John Squire). His image looked, to me, like a deconstructed Union Jack that had been subjected to the touch of an action painter. I wonder why he choose to call it Untitled and then give it a parenthetical title. Hmmm.

 

Julie Mehretu - Chromatic Light Paintings (panoptes) (2022)

 

Mark Bradford - Cloud Across a Sunny Field (2023)

 

Mark Grotjahn - Untitled (Backcountry 54.99) (2023)

 

Pamela Helena Wilson - Afram (2022)

 

Lesley Vance - Untitled (2023)

 

Richard Hoblock - STICK SEASON (2022)

 

Both Pamela Helena Wilson and Lesley Vance have gone for a summery palette and a sort of dreamy and ethereal feel to their pleasant paintings while Richard Hoblock, as befits an artist who has chosen to title his works in ALL CAPS, has gone for something a bit more abrasive. Then there's Matt Connors and First Triple Retraction which I liked but could hardly begin to explain why.

Much like many of the works on show.

 

And that was it. End of show. I wandered round Mayfair and back to Victoria and went home. I'd enjoyed the show, I like abstract art and it was free, but, apart from a few examples, there wasn't much of a conversation. With so many paintings, if there had been, it would have been a very loud one.

 

Matt Connors - First Triple Retraction (2023)