Abstraction Lab
Group Exhibition
June 6 - 18, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, June 6, 6-8 pm
37-39 Clinton St NEW YORK
ABOUT
New York, NY – Space 776 presents an exhibition of experimental abstraction by four artists: Mickey Ackerman, Bethany Altschwager, Sabrina Puppin, Masha Ryskin, and Yuzhe Yan. The exhibition is curated by Chunbum Park.
Our world is filled with abstract colors and shapes. From the coloring of LEGO bricks to the tubular shapes of Tic Tac’s to the bokeh in the camera of the subway beaming lights as it enters the station… What is the language of abstraction but a way for ourselves to make sense of the alienly beautiful world surrounding us? Or perhaps it is the language internal to our selfhood before being born as humans, as our consciousness was forged in the cores of the stars, if we are to be conceived of as light.
Abstraction is often confused with nonobjective art, which is an internally derived abstract form of art without any basis in the external physical reality. In contrast, abstract art is said to be a reduction of the external reality. In this exhibition, abstract art will be understood as involving either approaches to image-making.
How can abstraction be revitalized since its climax in the form of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s in New York? What do artists who consider themselves to be people of color or women have to offer that the white, male artists have overlooked in the field of ideas and visions?
In today's world where identity plays a key role in art and how artists conceive their work, a key concept might be identity-based abstraction. “Ethnic Abstraction,” which argues for the explorations and representations of ethnicity or cultural background through abstract art. Possibly another important concept would be “Feminist Abstraction,” although the women artists of this exhibit may not consider their works to be entirely confined to the aims or goals of Feminism exclusively.
About the Artists:
Mickey Ackerman (b. 1955) is a Providence, Rhode Island-based sculptor and painter whose work conveys hope for an ideal, sustainable world. He transforms materials left behind in workshops and factories into art, thereby celebrating the possibility hidden in everything. In his flowing sculptures, made from pieces of discarded poplar and basswood, the material takes the lead in deciding its shape. His 8×10 acrylic collages, painted on cast-off panels of wood, burst with color and hope.
Bethany Altschwager is an artist and licensed creative arts therapist born in Connecticut, working in New York, and living in New Jersey. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, a Master of Professional Studies from the School of Visual Arts, and a Doctorate of Art Therapy from Mount Mary University. While art has always been an important part of her life, it was her early experiences with darkroom photography that inspired her career in the arts. She fell in love with the magic of light and chemistry to create images of new worlds through close-up macros, extreme contrast, and double exposure. She started as an art educator teaching photography, graphic design, and general arts to children and teens before pursuing art therapy professionally. She now uses the creative process to support adults experiencing mental health challenges to express themselves, cope with stress and stigma, and develop a greater understanding of thoughts, feelings, and layers of identity. Her artwork utilizes digital techniques that bridge the disciplines of art, technology, and psychotherapy.
Sabrina Puppin, Ph.D, resides between New York City and Doha, Qatar, shaping her unique creative perspective. Puppin uses the visual language of color, shape, and form to create compositions in which the world as the seen and the known begin to dematerialize and the underlying spatial relationship becomes apparent. Through the use of hyper-colorful, shining, and overwhelming abstract arrangements, Puppin depicts and investigates the distorted perception of the reality around her, aiming to express her feelings and daydreams through work that wants to be felt, walked in front of, stared at, and dwelt on, rather than merely be illustrative. Her work has been showcased in the Satellite Art Show, SHIM Gallery, Cluster Gallery, Chashama galleries, and Established gallery in New York, the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan in Almaty, Kazakhstan, The Kyoto Museum, in Kyoto, Japan, The Leonardo Da Vinci Museum in Milan, Italy, as well as museums and galleries in the USA, Qatar, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, China, Israel, Malta, Dubai and India.
Masha Ryskin is a multidisciplinary immigrant artist from the Former Soviet Union. Her work has been exhibited both nationally in the United States and internationally in Canada, Taiwan, Finland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Indonesia, and has been reviewed in various publications, including The New York Times. She earned a BFA in 1995 from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Michigan in 1997. Ryskin is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Rhode Island Artist Fellowship in 2015 and the newly established Make Art Grant in 2024. She is a two-time Fulbright Fellow with a junior fellowship in 1998 and a Senior Scholar Award in 2022. She is currently on the faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Yuzhe Yan (Ashley), born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. Having lived in various countries, she holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the China Academy of Art and she is expected to graduate with a Master of Fine Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design in Spring 2025. Yuzhe’s artistic practice revolves around the concept of “body transformation”, treating the body as an open, limitless site of transformation—one that becomes a stage for the coexistence, deconstruction, and reconfiguration of gender and species. The figures she creates exist in a constant state of metamorphosis, shifting between inanimate objects, fantastical hybrid beings, and fictional creatures, all emerging from the subconscious. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Taiwan’s 121 ArtSpace, as well as in Los Angeles at The Box Gallery，Abigail Ogilvy Gallery and 4C Gallery. She has also participated in the Kaohsiung Art Fair in Taiwan.
About the Curator:
Chunbum Park (born in Seoul, 1991), also known as “Chun,” received their BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2020 and their MFA in Fine Arts Studio from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2022, where they changed their pronouns. Born a male, Park likes to cross-dress and depicts themselves as a woman in their paintings. They are the inventor of the ArtBid art auction card game and run the Office Space Gallery and the Emerging Whales Collective. Park writes exhibition reviews for the New Visionary Magazine and Tussle Magazine. They currently reside in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.
SELECTED IMAGES
ARTIST ESSAYS
1.
David Joselit states in his essay “Reassembling Painting” that “[a] ‘network painting’ establishes a field in which the force encoded in subjectobject marks passes over onto objects, which, as in examples of Duchamp’s and Picasso’s centrifugal modes of transitivity, appear either as readymades (including the subset of commodified pictures) or as a multiplication of styles. In network painting, aesthetic labor consists of carrying objects from one historical, topographic, or epistemological position to another (and back again).... Here such labor consists of the circulation of images through successive thresholds of attention and distraction–arguably the most important new source of value in the postwar period, whose economic engines range from television to the Internet.”
Roland Barthes had spoken of the death of the author back in 1967 and often the death of painting has been heralded repeatedly during the 20th and 21st centuries as this problematic stance which ignores the reinvention and repurposing of painting itself. However, there is no mention of the death of the painter while the paintings live on. Within this current series of works on paper studies and paintings, my exploration of painting theory where paintings of simulacra without an original referent arrives within an age of the post-digital, of a world crafted between reality and artificial intelligence within a post-human landscape. Here I paint completely flattened surfaces which refer to the implicit sculpture of wavy marks, bulbous drips, and configurations of colored shapes built in non-composition. With a postmodern palette of unusual color combinations, I explore the hyperreal landscape within the context of video game technologies, Neogeo color schema, and vaporwave/vaporware anti-nostalgia.
Abstraction of the techno geopolitical multiverse becomes this method for recognizing the human built alongside the technological playfulness that runs counter to the capitalist uses of such technologies. LEGOs which end up in a sublime pile of non-referential objects in a still life. These paintings and studies reflect my fascination with anti-painting painting without its analog antecedents but rather only its analog descendants. Ex nihilo digital worlds.
- Albert Abdul-Barr Wang
2.
"ALIEN 3.0"
On a sunny morning in Purlieu, a comical and strange little girl appeared on the land. Her head resembled a giant scallop shell, opening and closing intermittently. Each time it opened, her big eyes blinked, giving off an innocent yet curious expression. The little girl’s legs were also extraordinarily unusual—her legs were covered in beautiful eyes, which sparkled like tiny stars.
With each step she took, all the eyes would look around, as if observing the fascinating world around her. The little girl walked briskly, skipping and dancing down the streets of Purlieu. In her hands, she carried a bunch of carrots, but these were no ordinary carrots.
Each carrot was covered in soft, fluffy fur and had large eyes growing on it. The furry carrot eyes blinked from time to time, as if silently talking to the little girl or surveying the world around them. As the little girl cheerfully walked down the street, she called out to the residents, “Who wants to buy some carrots?
These carrots are not just for eating—they can see the world, too!”
The residents, curious, began to step out of their homes, their faces filled with astonishment when they saw the scene. An elderly woman leaned in and asked, “Can these carrots really see things?”
“Of course!” the little girl answered excitedly. “You can plant them in your garden, and they’ll help take care of each flower. They might even help you find lost kittens!”
The people gathered around her, both amazed and intrigued. Her scallop-like head opened and closed with a soft rustling sound, as if she were thinking about something. The eyes on her legs also watched the residents with keen interest, as if trying to understand their thoughts.
Just then, a little kitten suddenly ran out of an alley, clearly lost. The little girl smiled and raised the carrots. One of the fluffy carrot eyes suddenly opened wide, blinked, and gently emitted a beam of light. The light guided the kitten, as if saying, “Your home is over there.”
After completing her task, the little girl continued to skip forward, her scallop head opening and closing, and her eye-covered legs continuing to gaze around. She brought a new sense of freedom and fantasy to Purlieu, breaking the usual limits of the world. In this place, nothing was fixed or permanent—every creature and object could change in the most unexpected ways.
- Yuzhe Yan
3.
"ALIEN 6.0"
In the extraordinary world of Purlieu, where the usual rules of nature do not apply, a sweet aroma suddenly fills the forest one day—the scent of fresh strawberry jam. A large pot of freshly made jam steams invitingly, as if calling all the strange and wonderful creatures to come and indulge in its deliciousness. Sure enough, drawn by the irresistible fragrance, curious beings from all corners of Purlieu gather, eager to partake in a feast filled with laughter and delight.
The first to arrive is a little duck that walks backward. It has four fluffy little heads, each covered in soft fur, giving it a comical yet endearing appearance. Despite walking in reverse, it moves with surprising agility, letting out a distinctive quacking sound that seems to be its own way of singing its love for strawberry jam. Skillfully weaving through the trees and rocks as if it has mastered this way of moving, the little duck finally reaches the jam pot. All four of its heads stretch forward simultaneously, taking in the sweet scent before letting out a chorus of satisfied "quacks."
Next comes a red duck covered in soft green fur, with three fluttering wings that keep it effortlessly light on its feet. Known for its boundless curiosity, this duck's extra wing allows it to fly faster than most, always arriving first at the most exciting places. Fascinated by the sight of the jam, it flits over to the pot, scooping up a small spoonful with its fluffy little paws. Savoring it as if tasting a rare and precious delicacy, it carefully enjoys each bite, utterly captivated by the sweet flavor.
But the most striking arrival is the last one—a mighty, muscle-bound duck. No one knows why it possesses such incredible strength, but its powerful physique resembles that of a champion bodybuilder, with sharply defined muscles and a commanding presence in every step. This duck isn’t just strong—it also has an unusual love for eggplants, especially the ones covered in fuzzy hairs. Even as it follows the scent of strawberry jam to the gathering, it clutches a large, fluffy eggplant in its wings, munching on it contentedly. Unbothered by the odd combination, it alternates between bites of eggplant and sips of jam, thoroughly enjoying this unique pairing.
Together, these peculiar creatures dive into a joyful strawberry jam feast. The four-headed duck waddles backward through the gathering, letting out its signature calls, sending waves of laughter through the crowd. The red duck, with its three wings flapping in unison, flits and twirls through the air, stirring up the sweet aroma all around. Meanwhile, the mighty duck casually snacks on its eggplant, occasionally showcasing its immense strength by effortlessly lifting boulders twice its size, drawing cheers and applause from the other creatures.
As the celebration unfolds, the air is filled with laughter, the scent of strawberries, and the warmth of companionship in the whimsical world of Purlieu.
- Yuzhe Yan
4.
Images in my Street Layers series are digital collages of photographs of graffiti and textures I find traveling across New York City and the tri-state area. I pull images from different neighborhoods and even times, experimenting with how they meld together. On the surface, the titles appear to be plausible cross streets in New York neighborhoods. In reality, the titles represent new, liminal spaces that do not exist in physical reality. West 96th and Dupont Street features photographs of rust and graffiti from the Upper West Side and Midtown neighborhoods of Manhattan, with the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn.
For me, these images represent the confluence of time and space. Preserving images of that which, by its nature, will be washed away, painted over, reconstructed, repaired, or torn down highlights the tension between holding on and letting go. Images in these layers break apart so they can come back together in new configurations. My work encapsulates the tension between preservation and the ephemeral.
- Bethany Altschwager