"What art now has in its hands is mutable stuff which need not arrive at the point of being finalized with respect to either time or space."

Robert Morris " Notes On sculpture: beyond objects" Artforum, NY, april 1969

WALL PAINTING No. 196 GRIP, 2007 - Jan van der Ploeg / Willum Geerts

Geeske Bijker, Driessens/Verstappen, Ab van Hanegem, Jasper van der Graaf, Krijn de Koning, Jan Robert Leegte, Peter Luining, Jan van der Ploeg, Remko Scha, Martijn Schuppers, Jochem van der Spek, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Thomas Wildner

UNFINISHED BUSINESS presents a group of leading contemporary Netherlands-based artists working in the area of non objective and abstract art. More precisely, the artists seem to balance between two of the conclusive points of Modernism in art; the formalism of “Minimal Art” at one side and the “Anti Form” as described in 1968 by Robert Morris as an opposite incentive.

Morris emphasized that the “new art” should not be about the final product. He stated that ideas and processes should be seen as far more important and potentially more interesting than a single product with its limitations. The “process art” which mirrored Morris' ideas back in the sixties has found great succession in contemporary generative art. With help of (computer-aided) algorithms many artists nowadays make programmed “endless” works. The paradox which already existed in Morris' time is, that the “Anti Form” always found “form” through presentation. Rigid textual descriptions tried to eradicate “form”, but choices in presentation couldn't be abandoned.

For many decades there was a relative silence in the development of abstract art. Due to influential post modern thinking everything was possible except ideological modernist art making, especially the reduced abstraction of Minimalism or (utopian) social pretension of the avant-garde attitude. Within the last years, younger generations of artists around the world seem less bothered by bounding history. They have resurfaced embracing the form, yet also emphasizing on the aspect of process in their work. For them the modernist experiment has untouched horizons to be explored.

Curated by Jan Robert Leegte and Jan Maarten Voskuil

Hosted by Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz

Period: 9th May 2008 - 5th July 2008

Opening: 8th May 2008, 19.00