Born in Germany and based in London, Tomma Abts has received
considerable acclaim for her paintings and drawings. Her work has been
shown at such major international exhibitions as the Berlin Biennial
(2006) and the Carnegie International (2004), as well as at prestigious
museums across Europe, including Kunsthalle Basel (2005) and Van
Abbemuseum (2004). In 2006 she was awarded the Turner Prize.
Each Tomma Abts painting is the result of an intuitive process, a
complex operation of addition and substraction. Within rigid
parameters - unvarying materials and size - she conjures a progression
of shapes and colours, building layer upon layer of seemingly
spontaneous geometry until the work reaches its culmination: an abstract
arrangement in perfect tension.
This volume, the artist's first extensive monograph, provides a
comprehensive survey of her work, with full-colour images of
thirty-seven paintings, and eighteen drawings, as well as three
specially commissioned essays. In the first essay, Laura Hoptman
dismantles abstraction's historical framework to illustrate the
uniqueness of Abts' approach. Jan Verwoert meditates on the subversive
power of contemplation, findind in Abts' artistic process a validation
of "the beauty of latency." And Bruce Hainley gazes at Abts' work
through the fictional eyes of Margit Carstensen - actress, muse, and
star of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.
