An Alternative History of Abstraction
manuel arturo abreu 

The dominican non-disciplinary and non-binary artist and poet manuel arturo abreu (*1991 Santo Domingo) will contribute three works to the Study Room – two moving image works and one textual work. Ephemeral sculpture, text-based performance, and a concern with new connections between cultural expressions are central to the artistic practice. Language is understood as an abstract means of artistic expression that abreu uses to question conventional interpretations and canonizations of artistic manifestations.

In this new performative lecture (presented as a screen recording with sound), the Dominican artist manuel arturo abreu follows Suhail Malik’s call for an exit from contemporary art and its historicism. Suhail Malik is vice-rector of the Institute of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University, London. An important part of this exit is the acknowledgement that abstraction is a phenomenon that doesn’t belong to the Europeans. abreu points out that the phenomenon of the abstract goes back far in time and illustrates this with examples from very different cultural backgrounds. For example, abreu discusses Muslim aniconism (absence of material representations), West African polyrhythm and fractal patterns, and the medieval philosophy of Ethiopia. The artist embraces an interdisciplinary approach that is seeing abstraction as fundamental in its function for everyday life. The germ of abstraction seems to be the tongue, according to the artist, because language and its articulation are abstraction par excellence.

The lecture was premiered by Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta.

The lecture will be available for the entire duration of the exhibitions by Kevin Jerome Everson and Doreen Garner on the Study Room website.