By Yasmil Raymond
True to its title, the exhibition Abstract Resistance considers the metaphor of “resistance”
as a complex political and compositional force defining art of the past half-century. Starting
with Michel Foucault’s assertion that “where there is power, there is resistance,” it explores
art made since World War II that has been shaped by traumatic historical events in complex ways.
Rather than creating an explicit art of social protest, artists have responded to violence and
upheaval with a type of art that rejects comforting moral certainties. Such art is resistant
to interpretation; it withholds information, it tends to evade identification, and certainly it
protests interrogation.
Curator Yasmil Raymond provides an overview of the thematic material and artwork, art historian
Simon Baier traces the origins and development of nonobjective art through the writings of critics
such as Charles Baudelaire and Meyer Schapiro, and philosopher Marcus Steinweg draws on the ideas of
Theodor Adorno and others to provide a theoretical framework for artistic resistance.
Softcover, 96 pp.
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