“Abstract” art is not always purely abstract; the figurative continues to have a substantial, visible impact on contemporary abstract painting.

Some Options in Abstraction, a thoughtful and provocative show curated by Klaus Kertess at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, seeks to make this relationship accessible and concrete. Kertess has selected a small but rich and diverse body of work; these dozen paintings and photographs by seven artists illuminate some “options” in contemporary art. Viewing the works—awe-inspiring for their large size yet friendly and accessible in this familiar context—one is forced to contemplate the nature of what comes after the minimal, the reality behind a picture’s pure color, form and abstraction.

“The canvas plane once guarded against outside referentiality has been invaded by metaphor, narrative, and gleeful appropriation of historical styles,” Kertess writes in the show’s description. And so Kertess uses the paintings of Carroll Dunham, Sue Williams, Laura Owens and James Rosenquist, the photographs of Aaron Siskin, Wolfgang Tillmans and Adam Fuss, to demonstrate this point. In each piece of the show the influence of daily life and the outside world is visible, sometimes by means of a decontextualized reference to an everyday object and other times through shapes with figurative overtones.

The photographs of the late Siskind generally consist of close-ups of elements of graffiti, torn posters and walls. Stripped of their original worldly context and printed larger than life, the black-and-white prints emanate the same power as an abstract expressionist painting. In “New York 6” (1950), the shadows, textures and patterns of what may have been a crumpled paper bag or a torn-up poster suggest a complex and intertwined three-dimensional space, composed of intense and richly black shadows but equally of midtones, highlights and small, textured corners. At once abstract and grounded in reality, the work could also suggest another form of reality.

Fuss sucessfully infuses a kind of meta-realism into his work, using the actual process as a means of bringing the outside world into abstraction. His photograms—prints created sans negative, by placing objects directly on photosensitive material—resemble a cross between the line and drips of Pollock and the intertwining strands of a DNA molecule. In his photogram from the series “Details of Love” (1992), childlike and uneven multi-colored (but predominantly black) squiggles dance around the browned surface, pulling and leaping and creating a tangled web. The lines, as it turns out, are no product of innocence, but are the result of Fuss’ experimentation with the chemical interaction of rabbit intestines with photographic paper. The ultimate in worldliness—an organ that facilitates surviva—transforms into illusion, abstraction on a photographic surface.

Vibrant, even gaudy, Williams’ oil-painting “Red and Purple Deal” (2001) uses bold, almost Warholesque colors and swirling lines to create an elegant interchange. Almost dizzying to look at, each line appears to be a dancer, sensuously curved and filled with fluid motion. Towards the right side of the canvas, the lines degenerate into a kind of mob chaos, as they begin to overlap and move less smoothly and more abruptly. Consisting of only two colors and a single type of line, Williams manages to convert her canvas into an orchestrated ballet.

Laura Owens provides the clearest, and most whimsical, example of the connection between abstraction and figuration. In “Untitled” (1999), a monkey sits atop a branch, staring at a bee, which exists in three dimensions as thick gobs of oil paint form the yellow and black body of the bee, while the wings are mere outlines. The work also has more abstract elements when decomposed; the monkey is formed from a single color, almost like a Rorsharch inkblot test except for the details on its face. Most of the canvas remains blank and open; the branch twists unrealistically. Abstract and the real coexist on this canvas with its guardedly ironic sensibility—the monkey examines the bee as we might examine the painting.

Through content or means of creation, each work in this show integrates this central notion of the fine line between the two traditions of art. The exhibition succeeds in its didactic intentions: It is relevant and easily understandable, but not so obvious as to be shallow. Perhaps its greatest strength is in allowing these paintings—each so different in style, and each powerful enough to stand alone—to come together, to seem connected, to take on new meaning through association.

Because the abstract can seem disconnected from daily reality, from the expected, it is often a more difficult form of artistic expression for viewers to connect with. However, it can be rewarding to come to terms with the unfamiliarity of abstraction—by seeing how truly familiar it can be. Some Options in Abstraction provides a venue to visit and contemplate the abstract within a comfortable, organized setting.

SOME OPTIONS IN AbSTRACTION

at

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

Through Nov. 11