John Phillip Abbott

Since his debut, John Phillip Abbott explores the relationship between text and image, blurring the boundary between both. Words, names or short sentences organize his compositions with a grid-like structure and function as images rather than mere concepts. Complex and visually intense, his linguistic structures challenge legibility and invite the viewer to enter an interstitial zone, between “reading" and “seeing".

Each lexical entity chosen by Abbott for his painting presents itself as a problem or a puzzle. The starting point is the word itself and its diaristic value, as it refers to his past experiences and memories. After the lexical content is determined, comes the act of painting, which consists in spelling out words or short sentences, through a peculiar calligraphic vocabulary composed of geometric shapes (stripes, rectangles, diamonds, pyramids, etc.). These shapes, interweaving with words' usual configuration, are carefully chosen as part of formal solutions to the painterly problems and situations he encounters. The act of transformation – the one that puts words in disguise and makes grids out of letters – is thus purely formal and detached from the initial semantic load. In this sense, Abbott is close to the Support/Surface movement, considering formal research to be primordial in his work. He doesn't consider words as concepts, but rather adopts a sensuous approach towards them – like canvas or paint, words are to be felt, manipulated, experienced