“Zombie Formalism, 1970–2016” Exhibition

Mitchell Algus Gallery

poster for “Zombie Formalism, 1970–2016” Exhibition

This event has ended.

The Mitchell Algus Gallery presents Zombie Formalism, 1970–2016, a group exhibition.

Zombie Formalism, a term coined by Walter Robinson and fleshed out by Jerry Saltz, refers to the glut of look-alike, generic abstract field painting produced over the past few years by young, mostly male, artists. The style however, is not new. It goes back decades, dating to the end of art movements, arising from the middens of minimalism and conceptual art in the early 1970s. Known at the time as lyrical abstraction, the style codified abstract painting as a procedural Danse Macabre, generating art with a diversely uniform look, manifest in rule-bound yet random outcomes. Seen from a contemporary perspective lyrical abstraction remains undead, a being still to be reckoned with.

The current exhibition includes four painters and a sculptor showing work from 1970s, plus Walter Robinson, Zombie Abstraction’s neologian, who in the 1980s put his own timely spin on abstract painting’s endgame. Seen in present context their art stands among today’s best and most ambitious.

All these artists are men, as are the bulk of Zombie Formalism’s current practitioners. Zombie Fromalism, 1970–2016 also includes the work of three emerging women artists, Whitney Claflin, Megan Marrin and Julia Rommel, whose differing takes on painting’s current incarnations serve as inverse historical commentary and counterpoint.

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Schedule

from October 29, 2016 to December 22, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-10-29 from 18:00 to 20:00

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