It makes sense that a show called Twee Abstraction would take place in an artist-run exhibiton space, since its birth is rooted in the DIY, independent music scene of punk and post-punk. Abandoning the political overtones of punk, the early twee pop bands combined the DIY attitude and straightforward, three-chord rock of punk with childish lyrics and bright 60s girl group harmonies. Their music was called a “revolt into childhood” by some commentators, but branding these bands as a faux naive movement doesn’t do them justice. While there were often childish elements to twee pop, it is really the way that these musicians combined a serious playfulness with a punky, DIY approach to their instruments and song structure that is the focus of this exhibition.
The artists in Twee Abstraction can be seen as descendants of the Post-Minimalism giant Richard Tuttle, who responded to Minimalism in a way not unlike how the twee bands responded to punk rock – by replacing the endgame philosophy of Minimalism with a radical playfulness and restless search for serendipity from humble materials. Thirty years on, this radical playfulness permeates the processes and materials of many contemporary artists working today . Raphael Rubinstein called this “Provisional Painting” in an eponymously titled Art in America article, while, more recently, Sharon Butler explored this idea in a Brooklyn Rail article entitled “The New Casualists.”
One can feel this “revolt into childhood,” in the work of the artists in Twee Abstraction. Lauren Collings’s Capton Bunc is literally finger painted and crudely collaged, recalling arts and crafts time in elementary school, while Tamara Zahaykevich’s Pumpkin Queen feels like an oversized toy with colors pulled from a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Alex Paik’s Prelude and Fugue (Cootie) feels like a child’s clunky origami interpretation of an early Frank Stella and is, in fact, named after a “cootie catcher.”
The more “straightforward” artists in the show mirror the simple, three chord rock that the twee pop bands inherited from punk. Andrew Masullo’s 5236 reveals an elegance in its seemingly straightforward composition, while the loose brushiness of Brooke Moyse’s Small Yellow Diamonds with Pink Lines creates a complex painterly space through deceptively simple means.
The artists in Twee Abstraction emphasize the slight imperfections of non-mechanical mark making, much like how the slightly out of tune guitars or the hissing white noise from lo- fi recording methods permeate the music of early twee pop bands. Siobhan Liddell’s Untitled combines casually crumpled up paper with decidedly hand-cut forms, while Jeffrey Scott Matthews’s strange rug-quilt’s beautifully sewn triangles are stained with grit and paint splatters.
This “casualist” approach to materials and markmaking mirrors twee pop’s DIY aesthetic. Whether it is through Suzanne Goldenberg’s gracefully underproduced The Lovable Pauper, which feels almost accidental in its construction, or through Caroline Santa’s radically under-composed bulletin board that blurs the line between found and constructed object, the artists in Twee Abstraction exhibit an extreme trust in their materials and a distaste for overproduction.
Country musician Harlan Howard once said that all you needed to write a good country song was “three chords and the truth.” In many ways, the artists of Twee Abstraction follow this maxim – by taking a lo-fi and straightforward approach to artmaking, these artists manage to reveal some truth about their materials or about the process of artmaking through work that is refreshingly sincere, graceful, and playful.
— Alex Paik is an artist and was the founder and director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid. He currently lives and works in New York City.
