Christoph Dahlhausen (DE), Kevin Finklea (US), Billy Gruner (AU), Peter Holm (DK), Kyle Jenkins (AU) and John Nixon (AU).
Curator | Peter Holm
22/3 -20/4 2018
Mikhail Bulgakov Museum | Kiev | Ukraina
The exhibition examines nonobjective art as a shared yet continually evolving language, articulated through a group of small-scale works that emphasize reduction, structure and conceptual clarity. The project is grounded in the experience of artistic practice as an activity shaped by solitary decision-making in the studio, while simultaneously belonging to a wider field of collective research. Despite geographical distance, the participating practices reveal converging concerns, parallel adjustments and common points of reference that suggest the existence of an implicit grammar of abstraction.
This grammar operates through minimal variations, incremental shifts and precise formal decisions. Rather than proposing rupture, the works build meaning by extending established principles, constructing new visual “sentences” that remain connected to their historical foundations. In this sense, abstraction is presented not as a closed system but as a process of continuous refinement.
A key historical framework for the exhibition is the period between 1913 and 1915, when Suprematism emerged and monochrome painting redefined the autonomy of form. The legacy associated with Malevich and the cultural context of Kiev is understood here as an ongoing point of departure rather than a resolved moment. Nonobjective art is approached as a field that continues to generate research, perhaps with renewed relevance in the present, as questions of form, material and meaning are reconsidered through contemporary practice.
Within this context, the exhibition brings together works by Christoph Dahlhausen (Germany), Kevin Finklea (United States), Billy Gruner (Australia), Peter Holm (Denmark), Kyle Jenkins (Australia) and John Nixon (Australia). While each artist maintains a distinct trajectory, their practices intersect through a shared commitment to abstraction as an autonomous system. Their works engage with geometry, repetition, seriality and the reduction of visual elements, often referencing modernist strategies while testing their limits in the present.
The modest scale of the works reinforces their function as concentrated propositions rather than expansive statements. These pieces operate as sites of focused inquiry, allowing subtle differences in approach to become visible across the exhibition. The format encourages close viewing and comparison, highlighting how nonobjective principles are interpreted, translated and reconfigured across different artistic contexts.
Icons \ nonobject positions nonobjective art as a living and adaptive language, sustained through historical awareness and ongoing experimentation. The exhibition serves both as a concise presentation of highly developed practices and as an entry point for further exploration into the artists’ respective bodies of work and the contemporary relevance of abstraction.