PAINTLESS POST-PAINTERLY ABSTRACTION 2020
Paintless Post-Painterly Asbstraction - exhibition view, Société d'Electricité, Brussels(2020)
At the end of the 1950s, Frank Stella’s research overturned a conception of painting that was
at the time largely dominated by abstract expressionism (Rothko, Pollock,...). Stella and other
contemporary artists, such as Daniel Buren or Donald Judd, freed themselves from any form of expressivity.
With them the work can be the result of a disembodied methodology; one can paint as one would do lengths in a swimming pool.
Once transmitted, for example in the form of a manual, the process of making a painting by
Stella could then be sufficient to reproduce it at home, from a distance. It is therefore tacitly a form of d.i.y.
painting, since it no longer imposes a sensitive relationship during its realization. The artist is, in a way, no longer necessary.
Hofmann’s proposal refers to a painting from 1959, Tomlinson Court Park I.
The originality of his piece is manifold; on the one hand, he uses HTML code to
describe the surface of the painting. It will henceforth be a painting without paint.
Tomlinson Court Park I by Frank Stella (1959)