Tomma Abts: Queen of Subtlety

To start off, I am not the biggest fan of abstraction. I'm a figurative artist so the work I'm most attracted to usually involves the human body. However, after further reflection, Tomma Abts' work has always occupied an amusing place within my family tree of artistic influences (amusing because of the comical juxtaposition between her work and the grisly, psychologically dense portraits by my father Lucian Freud).

Abts' work is fascinating, hypnotic. She possesses an ability to create a two dimensional plane that is simultaneously three dimensional. Her surfaces are painted with extreme precision; every stroke is blended as if it was an entity in itself.

Her arduous (obsessive?) technique works for her style. I've read before that from initial planning to completion, one 15" x 19" painting can take her years. This level of care and detail when applied to abstraction is so refreshing to me, especially considering art such as this:

(Fredrik Vaerslev @ Andrew Kreps Gallery. I'm sorry but I think the entire class was out the door after less than a minute)

I found most of Tomma's finished paintings at David Zwirner to be fantastic. All praise for her work aside, I couldn't help but feel a sense of de ja vu. Nothing about her "New Works" felt new to me. If you asked me to compare a painting from this exhibition with a painting from her 2006 series that garnered a Turner Prize, I wouldn't note a huge difference. Abts has found a model of painting that works for her and likes to safely stay in her own shadow, even maintaining the same canvas size.

This turns me off. I love seeing artists evolve, transform, maybe even deconstruct their own style.