Temporalities in Abstraction

Color ignites the capacity to unify what is remembered. These personal, collective, and ancestral memories are agents of resistance, affirming simultaneous temporalities and experiences in the global African communities. African American Abstract and Conceptual artists use tone, saturation, hue, luminosity, iridescence, pigmentation, and color patterns to denote their innovated palates as radical meditations of the Black imagination.

Embracing chromatic patterns based on ancestral African color palates such as the Bakongo of Central Africa, African American Abstract and Conceptual artists such as James Philips, Julie Mehretu, Norman Lewis, and Glenn Ligon communicate consciousness of connecting to infinitive space, imaginative place, representational and non-representational elements that are subjective to the African American experience.

genesis_abstraction_SamGilliam — Sam Gilliam, American, 1933 - 2022, Molly, 2006, Mixed media and collage, 14 1/2 x 21 in., The Ronald W. and Patricia Walters Collection

genesis_abstraction_LouStovall — Lou Stovall, American, born 1937, Causation, 2006, Monotype, Sheet: 17 × 32 1/8 in. (43.2 × 81.6 cm), Image: 17 × 32 1/8 in. (43.2 × 81.6 cm), Framed: 27 1/2 × 41 1/2 in. (69.9 × 105.4 cm), The Ronald W. and Patricia Walters Collection

genesis_abstraction_NormanLewis — Norman Lewis, American, 1909 - 1979, Untitled, 1963, Pastel on paper, 21 3/4 x 17 in., The Ronald W. and Patricia Walters Collection

Artists Included:

James Phillips, American, born 1945

Sam Gilliam, American, 1933 – 2022

Chakaia Booker, American, born 1953

Julie Mehretu, Ethiopian-American, born 1970

Kevin Cole, American, born 1960

Shinique Smith, American, born 1971

Norman Lewis, American, 1909 – 1979

Glenn Ligon, American, born 1960

Preston Sampson, American, born 1960

Lou Stovall, American, 1937 - 2023

Helen Brooks, American