Visible Traces (Mountain Water Air)

Central to the works Steir has selected for this exhibition are questions regarding the nature of abstraction. At what point does an image become abstract? Since she rose to prominence in the 1970s, Steir has channeled inspiration from East Asian art, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, European Romanticism, American Minimalism, and Conceptualism into paintings that masterfully synthesize gesture, process, and reference. As Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu recently conveyed, “Steir’s signature, multilayered canvases have time and time again redefined what it means to be a contemporary painter. Working within a framework that is simultaneously both painterly and conceptual, she has continued to create radical and profound abstractions.”

Among the artists featured in Visible Traces will be the 18th-century Edo artists Hokusai and Hiroshige, 19^th-century Romantic Victor Hugo, and 20^th-century contemporaries such as Alighiero Boetti, Sol LeWitt, Cy Twombly, and Agnes Martin, whom Steir visited in New Mexico every August for thirty years. Works by Steir’s peers such as Joan Jonas, Mary Heilmann, Brice Marden, Helen Marden, Julie Mehretu, Ugo Rondinone, Stanley Whitney, and Terry Winters will also be included in the exhibition. Together, the paintings and sculptures on view offer a framework in which to consider Steir’s long commitment to the radical freedom that she has explained as, “being more attached to the process than the conclusion.” This liberation has been forged through her relationships to other artists and artworks, through what she has learned from and with them about simplicity, chance, and structure. Visible Traces reveals something of this resonant, ahistorical exchange on such abiding concerns as the potential of paint, the nuance of method, and the resonance of affinity.