Curated by LA Art Critic, Peter Frank, Towards a 21st-Century Abstraction features painters pushing abstraction into new territories. This exhibition brings together artists who are dedicated to two-dimensional abstract art. They are not defined by what they do or why they do it, but how they struggle to participate in what has become a global discourse in art.

“Theory does not validate something like visual abstraction, it simply frames it,” Frank writes in an essay about the exhibition. “Abstract art endures because artists still make it – still devote their lives to it, still investigate its problems and possibilities, still answer to the challenges posed by other artists, contemporaries and predecessors alike, and still establish visual vocabularies based on elements at once laid bare and intricately combined."

We invite the entire community to experience this exhibition and ask, ‘what is abstract art?’ That is what truly sets this exhibition apart.

Click here to learn more about the exhibition.

Mark Nesmith's art is a testimony to the resilience of the creative spirit.

Throughout his career he has explored a multitude of themes, from the bayous, beaches, and woods he roamed as a child in Southeast Texas to whimsical critters addressing the superficiality of modern society and the artist's unease with mankind's relationship to nature. Underlying his work is a deep love for vibrant color and thick, textured surfaces. From diminutive paintings to large, expansive canvases, his expressive artworks combine observation, memory, and imagination.

Mark has continued his steadfast pursuits in paint through the hardships life throws at us all. Most recently the right-handed artist battled through back and shoulder surgeries affecting his dominant hand. Always moving forward, the artist took up the brush with his left hand creating abstracted images utilizing a grid not unlike Chuck Close and Paul Klee before him. Color and light are brought to the forefront in tapestry like forms that gradually resolve to images of the ocean or land.

From above or below, from far or near, Texas geography, geology and landforms inspire artists with the diversity, grandeur, mystery, and complexity that unrolls from the Gulf to the Staked Plains to the Borderlands and the Hill Country.

This exhibit presents an exploration of the vast Texas landscape by artists working in the art quilt form ranging from representational to abstract styles. The work examines our human attachment to specific places, and what makes those places meaningful and unique. This exhibit aims to provide its audience with a more in-depth understanding of the range of expression and processes of the art quilt form.

This exhibition consists of work created by SAQA members in Texas. Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development, documentation, and publications.

Large-scale paintings created by emerging Black artists in Wilmington, Delaware, were originally painted and installed on the boarded-up storefronts of a main street in the city’s downtown area.

The boards went up on the windows all over Wilmington’s downtown area on May 31st, 2020, just hours after the national civil unrest over the murder of George Floyd. The works were commissioned by Jonathan Whitney and Eliza Jarvis of Flux Creative Consulting and Joe Del Tufo of Moonloop Photography. The three organizers sought to find a way to commemorate that moment in time and give Black artists a blank canvas on which to express themselves.

Artists James Wyatt, Jaquanne LeRoy, Jannah Williams, Erica Jones and E. Lize completed works that were on view downtown for several months and gained widespread press as word spread across the nation.

Special thanks to Art World for sponsor this exhibition.