Dimensions: support: 841 x 594 mm
Copyright: © Tomma Abts | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Tomma Abts' "Untitled no. 6" from the Tate. It's pretty minimalist, a quiet piece, almost like a geometric puzzle. What's your take? Curator: It's a fascinating exercise in controlled freedom, isn't it? Abts sets up these self-imposed rules, almost like a mathematical equation, but then injects this wonderfully awkward, almost human element with her colour choices and slightly off-kilter lines. Do you sense that tension? Editor: I do now! It's like a robot trying to paint. I'm still trying to get my head around geometric art, it all feels so abstract, or cold. Curator: Exactly! And that's where Abts is brilliant, she uses abstraction to find that tension between cold rationality and messy human imperfection. Next time, try imaging this: what if these lines could talk? What would they say? Editor: That's a cool way to look at it; I'll give it a shot. Thanks!
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Abts works intuitively, without a fixed idea of the finished work. She mainly makes paintings that involve a long process of layering and readjustment. Drawings such as this are more spontaneous. She sets herself certain limitations and chooses particular colours, and then is guided only by the internal logic of each composition. Critic and curator Bob Nickas has described the result as ‘an image of the process of thought, the triangulation of the hand and the eye and the mind’. Gallery label, May 2019
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