Shape of Light 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art

"An experimental masterclass … shows how masters from Man Ray and Mondrian to Maya Rochat transformed reality in their laboratory-like darkrooms and studios" –Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian

Published with Tate.

Shape of Light tells the intertwined stories of photography and abstract art from the early 20th century to the present day, looking at historic works in a variety of mediums from painting and sculpture to montage and kinetic installations. Beginning with the works of cubism and vorticism, it then highlights the key contributions of Bauhaus, constructivist and surrealist artists of the 1920s and 1930s. From there it proceeds to the "subjective photography" of the 1940s and 1950s, exploring the global scope of this movement through works by artists from Latin America and Asia, before considering the impact of photography on abstract expressionism, op art and minimalism in Europe and the US.From Man Ray and Alfred Stieglitz to major contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten and Thomas Ruff, and culminating in extraordinary new work by Antony Cairns, Maya Rochat and Daisuke Yokota, Shape of Light brings to life the innovations of photographers over this period, showing how they responded and contributed to the development of abstraction.

Shape of Light explores the development of photography and abstract art over the past century from the early explorations for a new reality that could be told through the formal properties of the picture plane, to the heights it has continued to achieve as modern and contemporary movements have taken hold, offering its own discourse on the infinite possibilities for abstraction to transcend all boundaries. (Sara Rosen Feature Shoot)

Comprehensive historical overview of photography's complex relation with abstract art. (Flaunt)

Showcases the ways in which photographers have manipulated light and materials to make abstract images rather than a reflection of real life. (Alexandra Wolfe Wall Street Journal)

Includes over 300 works by more than 100 artists, making it the first exhibition of this scale to trace abstract art and photography’s parallel development. (Marigold Warner British Journal of Photography)

Shape of Light...aligns photography with abstraction, and asserts quite definitively that nothing has to “have been” in order to become the subject of a photograph. (Gaby Wood The Telegraph)

This epic exhibition shows how masters from Man Ray and Mondrian to Maya Rochat transformed reality in their laboratory-like darkrooms and studios. (Carl O'Hagen Guardian)

Shows how masters from Man Ray and Mondrian to Maya Rochat transformed reality in their laboratory-like darkrooms and studios. (Carl O'Hagan The Guardian)