Ab-Anbar is pleased to present “Douglas Abdell: Intervalism and Other Mathematics” by the prolific Málaga-based artist. The exhibition’s focus is two decades of sculpture, painting, and drawing from the late 60s - 80s, which are dominated not only by the systematic deconstruction and reconstruction of language, but also Abdell’s fascination with its tradition and evolution, deeply entangled with his Mediterranean roots and a reimagining of its ancient languages.
Most of the exhibited works emerge from Abdell’s ‘Intervalist’ philosophy, a concept he articulated in his 1984 manifesto ‘Mirror Magnetik Interval’. This esoteric graphical magazine dissects the structure of numbers, letters, and the artist’s own alphabets – which draw heavy inspiration from the symbols of ancient phoenician and etruscan – to conceive of an internal structure, or a unified conception of things. The exhibition’s acrylic paintings and sculptures of bronze and welded-steel feature the same forms as throughout the manifesto, but also have threads that can be traced throughout Abdell’s preceding practice. As the artist states, “all of my work contains elements of its history and projections in its future,” whether that be the references to the ancient Mediterranean or his intensive and obsessive sculptural study; documents of which can be found saturating the walls of the exhibition’s underbelly downstairs, alongside new sculptures and drawings.
Contextualising the Intervalist works are inclusions from his ‘Kryad’ sculptural series and ‘Phoenaes’ paintings amongst others, dealing with phonetic games and translations of phoneme into material, or vice-versa. Present, too, throughout the exhibition are traces of the heady period of cultural upheaval in New York in the 70s where Abdell made his work and rose to prominence, as well as the politics of the Middle East and the Mediterranean: namely his own ‘Fourth Punic war’, a cultural and linguistic war in which Rome becomes a metaphor for centralisation and imperialism.
Ultimately, this exhibition demonstrates Abdell’s lifelong commitment to exploring the bond between language, form, and cultural intersections, presenting a prolific practice that reflects on the interconnectivity of all things to emerge with an artistic language instantly recognisable as his own.
