‘Social Abstraction’ Asks Us if Art Can Do Both

Historically, Black abstract art has been characterized as antithetical to activist or overtly political work by Black artists. While the case is often made that such a position is in itself political, the underlying assumption is that non-objective abstraction is unconcerned with such specific, referential content.

This summer, the group exhibition ‘Social Abstraction’, hosted by Gagosian, Beverly Hills, and curated by Antwaun Sargent, proposes another paradigm. The exhibition, which features only Black artists, claims to explore ‘the intersections of nonrepresentational form and social consciousness’, offering an alternative to dominant affiliations of social realism with representational imagery, especially figurative painting.

Jonathan Griffin spoke to some of the artists in the show to find out how they complicate common misconceptions of abstraction as an apolitical form, and how their work springs from or reflects their identities and their social experience.

Jonathan Griffin: We tend to think of non-representational abstraction as the voiding of content, the eradication of reference. But can abstraction ever be truly non-representational?

Alteronce Gumby: A professor once told me that everything representational is abstract, and everything abstract is representational. Within art, there is this inherent push-pull between figuration and abstraction, the recognizable and the incomprehensible. In my paintings, I’m using colours from the natural world to guide the mind’s eye into a place of the unknown, and toward a vast and universal perspective on the world around us.

JG: Do you perceive a contradiction between that possibility of ‘a universal perspective’ – an idea historically (if problematically) associated with abstraction – and the concept of ‘the social’ invoked by this exhibition, which might typically arise from an artist’s specific subjective experience?

AG: As humans living on this planet, we are bound to its social constraints. From our formative years, amid the intricate weave of social, political, racial and economic dimensions, we navigate life inside multiple streams of media and information that inevitably shape our perspectives. Yet within each of us lies the potential of stars. Through abstraction, we can seize upon these precious insular moments to contemplate and expand a richer connection of experience. While tethered to the social currents in the world, we are also drawn to cosmic currents: As above, so below.

JG: Allana, how does abstraction in contemporary art correspond, for you, with ideas of freedom?

Allana Clarke: The links between abstraction and freedom are of interest to me simply as a human living in and processing the world. For me, abstraction is uncertain, unfixed, slippery. Freedom is like this too, and a bit terrifying. We’ve never had it, so what does it look like, how do you act towards it? It’s something so unknown. To make abstract work is to move towards this unknown: attempting, failing, shaping, breaking, disorganizing, seeing and creating new meaning. Abstraction allows for the intertwinement of spirit and automatism to unhinge accepted mechanisms of being and knowing.

JG: How is meaning formed in your work, Eric? Is it pre-intentioned, or do you discover it through the process of making?

Eric N. Mack: I privilege discovery in my work – literally, as I discover material surfaces out in the world. But mainly, I’m discovering how a singular art object speaks. Meaning is often formed through the process of making. Therefore, meaning accumulates like sentence structure. A material, colour or texture adds context and a condition of light for the next. The manner in which materials change is really important, how they are sewn, stitched, glued as a line, or how they dissolve completely. Their physical capacity to fold, billow or be stretched, unites the disparate fragments as a unified whole.   

JG: Is the idea of ‘the social’ – perhaps a softer euphemism for ‘the political’ – an inevitable byproduct of your process? In other words, is an artwork unavoidably social or political because of the identity of its maker?

ENM: Politics and social identity can be conveyed through the material art object. There is power in this method beyond the narrative and speech of the artist: the artwork itself can speak, as a stranger providing its own history, desires and language, therefore locating itself in time and space. 

JG: Amanda, your ‘CANDYLADYBLACK’ (2021–23) series of paintings references particular social ideas through the colours of candies you remember from childhood. How do you navigate this line between overt signification and a more occluded – you might say abstract – presentation of information?

Amanda Williams: Balance between explicit and coded signifiers is at the heart of much of what I learned during my studies in architecture: how a structure can communicate fundamental concepts to its occupants in your absence. You can’t stand next to an entrance and say, ‘This colonnade is about contemplation.’ [Laughs] You can use scale, light, colour, geometry and sound to imbue a building with those sensations. Abstraction is inherent to architecture. Painting operates similarly for me. For a series like ‘CANDYLADYBLACK’, viewers who grew up with a ‘candy lady’ in their neighbourhood can immediately associate those memories with that electric green apple Jolly Rancher colour! It’s very concrete. Coding then becomes a relative term. Coded for whom? For an audience unfamiliar with the signifiers, the terms of engaging with abstraction still work: composition, space, surface quality, balance. This is less about me conveying a particular social message and more about tapping source material that offers opportunities for translation.

JG: Devin, how does ‘the social’ express itself in your abstract paintings, as distinct from your figurative work?

Devin B. Johnson: Throughout my journey as an artist, I’ve tried to develop a unique visual language that reconciles my ideologies and personal philosophies, rooted in explorations of space and memory. I believe that urban spaces possess a memory, much like the body. My work contemplates the intersection of personal and collective experience, where diverse walks of life converge. The things I create, whether figurative or abstract, are fraught with this concern for the figure, and the desire to search for something not yet uncovered. I’m fascinated by the potential of merging the subjective, intuitive realm with the complexities of shared spatial experiences.

JG: Kevin, what does abstraction offer you, as an artist, that figuration does not?

Kevin Beasley: Abstraction offers an even more extended multidisciplinary cross-section of conceptual ideas that tend to engage the full extent of the senses. With that said, what the two approaches can or cannot provide is predicated on the artist’s choices to take risks in the studio. 

JG: Rick, given your history of working with socially engaged art forms, intended to produce tangible change, what does painterly abstraction offer you at this stage in your career?

Rick Lowe: After 30 years of practicing socially engaged art, I’ve learned to let go of expectations. Practical change can be a good outcome, but it is not required for a work to be successful. Art’s power lies in its ability to push the boundaries of how we see, address and understand issues. The experience of an artwork has symbolic power. It can inspire individuals to seek and achieve tangible change. When working on socially engaged art, I always try to build a project based on the existing concerns of a community. Every aspect of a project is meant to inspire and empower through its symbolic presence. I try to accomplish the same thing with painting. Working in both painting and social sculpture allows me to appeal to different audiences. They have different starting points, but the goal is the same.

JG: Can abstraction ever exist outside of language, reference and identification?

RL: In my opinion, no. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Of course, this was the goal of the critical apparatus built around abstract expressionism, which was itself a response to Cold War social and political concerns. Critics, more than the artists themselves, posited the possibility of a purely self-referential abstraction: a form of art which was nothing more than material, form and presence. Of course, this desire was pursued mainly by white male artists who represented the dominant cultural force at the time. 

JG: How much do you relate your paintings to the work of earlier generations of Black abstract artists who declined to explicitly picture their own identities in their work?

RL: Black artists of the mid-20th century were divided into two camps: those who declined to represent Black images and lives in their work and those who felt it was essential. Artists like Sam Gilliam pushed to be a part of the mainstream conversation by making work that was beyond language, reference and identification. Fortunately, the culture has shifted away from white-male dominance over the past 40 years, opening the door for more complex multicultural expressions. These efforts made it possible for artists like myself to enter into a dialogue with multiple histories of art. So, I can make paintings using the language of ‘pure’ abstraction while simultaneously embodying multiple aspects of my personal, social, cultural and political identities.

AW: Across generations, many artists have registered similar ideas at a very high level but also have developed the ability to toggle between types of marks. Therefore, a full breadth of meaning doesn’t suffer from the forced categorizations that our predecessors had to actively resist. To Allana’s point, that’s a kind of freedom.

‘Social Abstraction’ is on view at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, until 30 August

^{Main Image: Rick Lowe, Cavafy Remains (detail), 2024, acrylic on canvas, 3.7 × 8.5 m. Courtesy: © Rick Lowe Studio and Gagosian; photograph: Thomas Dubrock}