Inherent Structure

Inherent Structure showcases a multigenerational group of 16 exceptional artists who challenge abstract painting’s historical associations with chance, gesture, and aesthetic purity. The works presented here instead reveal the deliberate structures embedded in abstraction, illustrating how contemporary practices emerge not just from formal conventions exclusive to painting, but also from the artists’ particular material, psychological, and sociopolitical concerns.

The exhibition invites you to explore more than 60 captivating works that reflect and refract contemporary abstraction through a variety of exacting and systematic frames of reference, providing fascinating insights into the underlying sources and influences of abstract painting today. Carrie Moyer’s and Arturo Herrera’s vibrant paintings draw uniquely from pop culture, cartoons, and graphic design. Stanley Whitney’s lyrical compositions build dynamic visual fields from bold blocks of color. Sam Gilliam removes paintings’ traditional framed supports for his stained, draped canvases, as does Laura Owens for her works made from digitally designed and manually screen-printed wallpaper—surfaces cut and extracted from the walls of a previous exhibition. Bearing Owens’s trademark wit, her enigmatic works also respond to visitors’ texts. Amy Sillman and Thomas Scheibitz construct imagined landscapes and interiors for viewers to optically traverse, while Eric N. Mack and Kevin Beasley draw from their physical surroundings to compose works with found textiles that include du-rags, house dresses, and threadbare curtains. You’ll also encounter works made of reclaimed fragments of stone and marble and a childhood doodle turned into a striking allover pattern for wallpaper and paintings presented in our lower lobby.