Material Abstractions

July 16 – October 4, 2026 

If an artwork is seemingly devoid of recognizable subjects—a human figure or a landscape for example—what kind of language or tools enables an artist to communicate with viewers? Within the Western art historical tradition, many artists responded to this question with the claim that abstract art could speak through pure form or color without directly referencing physical objects. In the early twentieth century, artists including painter Vasily Kandinsky deployed analogies with music to explain the unique powers of abstraction arguing that much like instrumental music could transport viewers through sound or vibration, abstract art could attain similar powers through color and compositional patterns. Meanwhile, artists in Russia writing around this same time advocated for the embrace of what they called faktura, or the language of materials. Rather than communicating through painted or sculpted illusions of objects, they argued that the intrinsic properties of materials should be allowed to speak for themselves. In other words, materials such as wood, glass, or metal each possess unique textures, degrees of plasticity, distinctive reflective properties and so on that should remain visible rather than disguised. Additionally, many Russian avant-gardists embraced the distinctive histories and cultural associations embedded in materials—from materials used in traditional crafts to those linked to modern industries. Therefore, the original contexts of these materials were believed to contribute to their meaning.

In a similar manner, the artworks showcased in the exhibition Material Abstractions demonstrate the unique communicative power of materials such as wool, wood, hemp, bamboo, clay, metal oxides, glass, leather, mirrors, repurposed books, animal bones, and seashells to name but a few examples. These works appeal not only to sight but also to touch and sound to invoke a multi-sensory experience. Moreover, historical traces or personal stories of these materials release meaningful information that can shape understanding. The alluring abstracted ovals in Centerfold by Usha Seejarim, for example, consist of tightly stacked clothespins arranged on their ends producing a patterned field. Her choice of material is quite deliberate as the humble clothespin immediately conjures the world of feminine labor and domesticity. While the artist is paying homage to this ordinary household object, she also liberates it by transforming it into a monumental work that cannot be overlooked.

Material Abstractions intentionally acknowledges the plural traditions of abstraction, many of which predate Western developments. Several Indigenous cultures, for example, have integrated abstract visual forms onto objects used in everyday life as well as in art, craft, and ceremony. These traditions continue to inspire Native American artists working today who are included in the exhibition. In referring to his work Fractured Light, artist Steven J. Yazzie (Diné/Pueblo of Laguna) describes how he draws from “indigenous art forms that incorporate abstraction to convey spiritual concepts, cosmologies, and connections to the land.” Similarly, Terran Last Gun, a Piikani (Blackfeet) artist, deploys abstract geometric shapes inspired by the symbols on Blackfoot painted lodges, hides, and war shirts and superimposes them onto vintage sheets of ledger paper that bear the traces of nineteenth-century hands. He explains that he is “revealing fragments of time, history, and Indigenous abstraction—an art form that has continued to survive in North America for thousands of years.”

While traditional Western narratives about the invention of abstraction have centered on singular heroic figures in the fine arts, more recently, researchers have demonstrated that abstraction has long been a central feature in craft traditions and the decorative arts. As such, Material Abstractions incorporates several examples of textile works generating bold abstract textured fields including Kenny Nguyen’s Endless No. 2 which uses strips of hand-cut silk to create a vivid three-dimensional abstract tapestry. Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States, was initially drawn to the universality of abstraction as a “coping mechanism” as he adjusted to expressing himself using a new language in his adopted homeland. His conscious choice of silk, however, enabled him to tap into a material with deep historical and personal ties to his native Vietnam. Jason Musson’s abstract fiber work titled Just The Weight of the Water Drags Me Down is equally invested in the origins of materials. Using vintage “Coogi” sweaters he deconstructs and reforms them creating vivid abstract compositions. These colorful expensive sweaters, he explains, were associated with influential African-American icons such as Bill Cosby or Notorious B.I.G. and thereby “possessed a kind of peculiar allure” as well as a “revered status.” Moreover, he came to appreciate their complex patterns and compositions finding a certain kinship to paintings by celebrated artists working in the tradition of gestural abstraction. “That Coogi,” he joked, “looks like a [Jackson] Pollock.”

Some scholars have made a strong case for considering African-American quilts to be among the earliest examples of American abstraction. Traditionally scraps from old feed sacks or garments were cut into “pieces” that could be arranged in a variety of patterns suiting the needs of the quilter rather than predetermined patterns. Robell Awake writes that “Piecing, typically done alone by a quilter” provides opportunities to “express new visual ideas—riffing on and reinterpreting geometric and abstract motifs.” This description aptly captures artist Yvonne Wells who describes her quilting process as “doing her own thing.” African-American Squares is among her most symmetrical designs with its repetition of red squares yet each of these squares is surrounded by fragments of traditional West African Kente cloth associated with Asante royalty. Integrating these fabrics into her quilt transforms them by generating new contexts for these artistic materials brought in by the African Diaspora.

The cultural associations of materials also inform the works by Samuel Levi Jones. At first glance, his work look both ways before you cross my mind appears to lean into the conventions of minimalist or geometric abstraction with its repetition of blue squares intermittently broken up with neutral-colored strips. Upon closer inspection, however, one can see that these shapes are covers and spines of books—specifically the once-esteemed set of tomes known as the “Harvard Classics.” This set was marketed as a “portable university” covering a range of topics from the history of civilization, religion, literature to politics and science by a roster of mostly male authors from Western countries with colonial legacies. By dissembling these books and obscuring their text, Jones, who is African-American, asks questions about how we confer authority. “I’m looking at the power structure of information, how information is distributed, who controls it.” Similarly, artist Esteban Ramón Pérez taps into the cultural legacies as well as personal memories inscribed within materials. His monumental abstract tapestry titled Baptism (Distressed) is composed of leather, a nod to his time working in his father’s upholstery business in Los Angeles. In doing so, he leverages those memories and acquired skill sets to pay homage to leather’s association with craft and everyday use. Yet he also brings a painter’s eye and art school training to freely arrange the large scraps of leather (sourced from custom upholstery businesses) like a painterly collage. Using specialized tools such as a custom tattoo machine he further embellishes the work with discreet patterns and private symbols.

Some materials possess an innate visual language that transcends written or spoken language. Lauren Fensterstock’s The Order of Things is a work that includes hundreds of seashells collected from a variety of sources. Inspired by artificial grottos in baroque and rococo gardens in Europe whose complex and idiosyncratic surfaces were often created with seashell shapes and textures, the work invokes a sensual world of decorative exuberance and variety. Although Fensterstock has coated her structure with a uniform layer of black, the work nevertheless shows how the organic energy of these forms cannot be contained as they spill out of the geometric niches where they have been placed. As such, the decorative forms of the shells and the abstract ordering of the grid produce an inherent tension suggesting what the artist describes as “a force beyond human control.” Exuberant decorative patterns also characterize Domenico Zindato’s abstract pastel Volo di una Freccia-Pensiero (Flight of an Arrow-Thought). The colorful work has no relation to the outside world reflecting instead on the inherent repetitions of rhythms and forms within that echo the decorative intensity of mandalas or densely layered prismatic fields. Like many self-taught artists, he does not preconceive a composition or subject but rather works intuitively and describes his process to be “like a meditation state or a trance.”

Artists like Erin Shirreff and Ruben Nusz are more analytical in their use of materials by challenging our visual and tactile perceptions of different media. Nusz’s Paint Stone, for example, juxtaposes a painterly abstract swirl of pigment against a backdrop of woven lines of raw canvas. While the work seems to celebrate easel painting by embracing its physical textures, the canvas weave is in fact an illusion created with a digital scanner.

Shirreff’s geometric abstraction titled Midday dilemma also hovers between media—a state that the artist describes as “a hybrid scenario.” Using reproductive images from vintage art and architecture textbooks which are subsequently transferred to metal strips, the artist creates large-scale collages that produce two and three-dimensional effects. The industrial printed dot patterns are enlarged and distorted disguising their origin as a photograph. This effect is further enhanced by the sculptural arrangement of these strips in deep frames.

All artworks presented in Material Abstractions are from the Permanent Collection of the Museum or are Promised Gifts. The works represent a wide array of materials, scales, and geographic traditions. A complete list of artists includes:

Machiko Agano
Edgar Arceneaux
Omar Barquet
Tonia Calderon
Lauren Fensterstock
Adebunmi Gbadebo
Carol Hepper
Samuel Levi Jones
Terran Last Gun
Susie J. Lee
Medrie Macphee
Jayson Musson
Kenny Nguyen
Richard Nonas
Ruben Nusz
Judy Onofrio
Esteban Ramón Pérez
Usha Seejarim
Erin Shirreff
Evelyn Ward
Lena McGrath Welker
Yvonne Wells
Steven J. Yazzie
Domenico Zindato