This special presentation by Victoria Miro in Schloss Sihlberg, Zürich considers the work of three artists, Idris Khan, Yayoi Kusama and Conrad Shawcross, focussing on an intersection of their practices through the use of abstraction and repetition. The presentation runs from 14 to 22 June 2014.
The gestural abstraction of Yayoi Kusama's ongoing series of Infinity Net paintings and her important large-scale accumulation sculpture Prisoner's Door provides a formal counterpoint to the geometric abstraction of Conrad Shawcross's Perimeter Studies sequence and Plosion sculpture, which take theories of cosmic expansion and contraction as their starting point. Like Shawcross's sculptures, Idris Khan's paintings employ a radial pattern comprised of lines of stamped philosophical texts in luminous white on a white gesso ground.
The minimal aesthetic of these monochromatic works emphasises an elegantly reductive complexity, as the artists use a considered economy of form, texture, and colour to convey or question sophisticated metaphysical or philosophical ideas. The serial is essential, as each of these artists deals with such concepts through their repeated and rigorous exploration of formal strategies.
