Abts practices what some critics refer to as geometric abstraction (think of Piet Mondrian's later works such as Broadway Boogie Woogie), opposing it to expressive abstraction as represented by the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, for example. At heart, geometric abstraction is an optimistic style, its belief in rationality buoyed by painters' efforts to create a truly international visual language. As so often happens, these two competing schools have much more in common than their squabbling suggests.

Sometimes the lines in an Abts painting appear to be raised above the canvas in a third dimension. The greeand yllow lines that zigzag downward in Inte look like lightening or fractured light rays. Another painting, Oke, could be music made visible,the looping curves staves weaving in and out of one another and overlapping as instruments do but words rarely can. You get to decide whether pink an d mauve or olive and spring green best represent the treble or the bass clef.
Tomma Abts was born in Germany in 1967 and attended art school in Berlin before moving to London in 1995 in search of a more stimulating artist community. She won the much sought after Turner Prize (bestowed by the Tate Gallery) in 2006. The prize, first awarded in 1984, was named for the 19th century British painter J.M.W. Turner.
An exhibition of paintings by Tomma Abts is now at the Serpentine Gallery in London and will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago in October.
Images:
1. Tomma Abts - Inte, 2013, private collection, Cologne.
2. Tomma Abts - Oke, 2013, David Zwirner Gallery, NYC.
3. Tomma Abts - Taade, 2003, Art History Archive.