Under Pressure

Drawn from the collection of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Under Pressure considers abstraction as a site of tension between order and disruption. Rather than offering escape, abstraction here operates as a point of collision, where systems intended to stabilize and contain begin to reveal their own instability. Across the works presented, a sense of underlying tension becomes visible. Control and vulnerability coexist in a state of friction, producing a persistent and unresolved unease. The exhibition does not seek to resolve these conditions, but to foreground them. Formal structures such as grids and repeated systems are subjected to pressure. They loosen, fragment, or give way to gesture. Surfaces accumulate and thicken, resisting restraint and asserting material presence. In this context, structures associated with clarity, protection, or definition appear increasingly fragile and provisional. Abstraction emerges as a charged field in which instinct and control intersect. Systems falter, and moments of excess or disruption come to the fore. What is revealed is not collapse, but a sustained state of instability in which order persists without ever fully securing itself. Under Pressure was curated by Alex Britton and Garry Holstein.