If we operate under the premise that the role of artist is to give spirit form, it goes without saying that abstraction and representation are simultaneous aesthetic and emotional concerns. It’s the power—and process—of apprehending allusion that enraptures us most. Lush Strokes, Phantom Forms features six contemporary artists, operating across the globe, whose selected works typify Robert Ryman’s prophetic (yet intuitive) assertion: “Abstract Painting is just beginning…All Possibilities are open to it.1” While the dawn of a categorically ‘abstract’ art in the Western canon is most attributed to post-war Abstract Expressionists, who often probed heroic and existential quests, today, it could be argued that artists working in this vein are more so looking towards the viewer, testing boundaries by honing individual processes that privilege our mutable perceptions. In an era characterized by multiple simultaneities and constant shifts, this exhibition revels in the complex ways ‘painting’ and ‘abstraction’ have proven infinitely absorbent, still transcendent, vehicles of expression.

Secundino Hernández deftly reveals the tensions inherent in building a painting. In some canvases, the basic elements of line, composition, colour, plane, process, and image pirouette in space; in other moments, these elements aggregate until reborn, appearing again as fresh pigment on an artists’ palette.

Hernández, born in 1975 in Madrid, where he currently lives and works, Hernández has held recent solo exhibitions at institutions including the Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015) and Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, France (2014). His work is in numerous institutional and private collections including National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, UK; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA;  Museo Municipal de Madrid, Spain; Kunstdepot Göschenen, Switzerland; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada.

Curator: Pujan Gandhi Artists: Matthias Bitzer, Andreas Eriksson, Secundino Hernández, Rachel Howard, Paul Fägerskiöld, Wolfgang Tillmans (ISA press-release)