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NOW-ISM: Abstraction Today at the Pizzuti Collection
By PAUL LASTER, AUG. 2015
Tutored on modern and contemporary art by Eva Glimcher—Pace Gallery’s Arne Glimcher’s mother, who co-founded the original Boston gallery with Arne and ran a satellite space in Columbus, Ohio in the 1960s and ‘70s—Ron Pizzuti was inspired to start collecting art on their initial encounter and has never looked back. The Columbus real estate developer bought his first artwork from Eva—a Karel Appel print on installment—and nowadays his love of abstraction stays true, but the works he’s acquiring in abundance are by young rebels, established icons, and international art stars.
Occupying three floors of the Pizzuti Collection—housed in a 1923 classical mansion that formerly served as the headquarters for the United Commercial Travelers insurance company—NOW-ISM: Abstraction Today, an exhibition of 21st century painting, sculpture, video, and design objects, presents abstract works by some of today’s best artists. The show features nearly 100 artworks by 51 American, Canadian, European, Asian, and Latino artists—20 women and 31 men—born between 1940 and 1987.
Standout artists include such emerging talents as Diana Al-Hadid, Sarah Cain, Bjorn Copeland, Jackie Saccoccio, and Mindy Shapiro, along with established practitioners like Haluk Akakçe, Tony Craig, Tomory Dodge, Teresita Fernández, Jacob Hashimoto, Jason Middlebrook, Steven Mueller, Albert Oehlen, Jean-Michel Othoniel, and Columbus-based art star Ann Hamilton.
In his essay for the accompanying catalog, savvy LA art critic David Pagel hits the nail on the head when describing the crux of the show, stating, “In one weird, hyphenated word, NOW-ISM insists that the works in it are both of the moment—particular to the circumstances in which they were made and attuned to the digital phase of the Information Age as it hurtles us through the first decade and a half of the 21st century—and outside of time: unshackled by the constraints of context and the restrictions of history because, as works of art, they are fully present in the moment and available to be intimately engaged by innumerable viewers, over and over again, in perpetuity.”
Scroll through the images below to get a taste of some of the best abstract art being made today. WM
Paul Laster is a writer, editor, curator, artist and lecturer. He’s a contributing editor at ArtAsiaPacific and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art and writer for Time Out New York, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Galerie Magazine, Sculpture, Art & Object, Cultured, Architectural Digest, Garage, Surface, Ocula, Observer, ArtPulse, Conceptual Fine Arts and Glasstire. He was the founding editor of Artkrush, started The Daily Beast’s art section, and was art editor of Russell Simmons’ OneWorld Magazine, as well as a curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, now MoMA PS1.
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