Joanne Mattera blogs about the exhibition Territory of Abstraction at Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through April 4, 2015. The show features works by Steven Baris, Rob de Oude, Edgar Diehl, Gabriele Evertz, Kevin Finklea, Enrico Gomez, Brent Hallard, Gilbert Hsiao, Gracia Khouw, Joanne Mattera, Mel Prest, and Debra Ramsay.
The post includes a Q&A with Mattera and gallery owner Christine Pfister. Asked whether the works in the exhibition can be called "reductive? Post-minimalist? Abstract?," Mattera replies: "Abstraction is our umbrella. Reductivism is for many of us both the path and the objective. As a group we do not make fussy art, although it may be referential. If by “post-minimalism" we understand that the aesthetic of the 1960s is being brought into a new century—a new millennium—with a broader sense of what’s possible in reductive work, then yes, we’re post-minimalists. Our reductive tendencies don’t adhere rigidly to industrial coolness or the anonymity of manufacture of a previous generation. We engage color, material, layers, process. Some of our work is quite sensuous."
