On Abstraction

In this essay, found in a monograph on Tomma Abts, Jan Verwoert offers an interesting insight into the the abstract image:

"There is something provocative about the insistence of remaining abstract. First of all, abstraction is the opposite of information. Providing and processing information is the dominant mode of cultural production today. Information is the universal medium of circulation, a currency that supposedly allows for unlimited convertibility, as any image, piece of writing, or music can be converted into and disseminated as data. But abstraction -like style, humour, or love - is inconvertible. True abstraction creates a singular experience of suspended meaning, the exhilarating sensation of the horizon of perception opening up and the mind reeling as new ways to see, think and feel become tangible. By virtue of its singularity, this experience of abstraction interrupts the circulation of data. It creates a momentary release from the cycle of reproduction and dissemination and takes you to a different place where you see things, for an instant, in and for themselves: singular, particular, irreplaceable and un-exchangeable.
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Abstraction reaches out to both to that which is not yet and that which is no longer present in the mind's eye. In this sense, the space of abstraction is an echo chamber in which each enunciation resonates with intuitions of the yet unthought and the presently forgotten. "

Abstraction speaks to something familiar, yet it is vague, elusive, void, intangible, like symbols, like sounds, like type on a page if
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Excerpts taken from: "The Beauty and Politics of Latency: On the Work of Tomma Abts" in Tomma Abts, (London: Phaidon, 2008)