NEW YORK.- The Museum of Modern Art will present Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making, March 4–June 11, 2007. Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making brings together 13 contemporary artists whose works offer a rich account of the interplay between abstraction and comic models of representation. While many art exhibitions have explored the impact of mass culture on contemporary art, they have generally focused on ubiquitous figuration and easily identifiable pop characters and themes. This exhibition approaches the topic from a different angle, looking at how artists—particularly those working in the last 15 years—have abstracted images culled from slapstick, comic strips and films, caricature, cartoons, and animation to address perplexing questions about war and global conflicts, the loss of innocence, and racial stereotyping. Bridging the rift between abstraction and comics in ways that are at once critical and playful, Comic Abstraction underscores the way popular imagery, which is so deeply imprinted on our collective consciousness, carries an extreme visual potency even when totally abstracted.

Works range from Julie Mehretu's intricately layered paintings of cartoon explosions and Arturo Herrera's psychological collages of Walt Disney children's coloring books to Ellen Gallagher's seductively minimalist paintings permeated by "blackface" signs culled from minstrel performances, and Rivane Neuenschwander's overpainted comic strips.

Many of these modes of comic abstraction reflect the intensely personal relationship that many contemporary artists maintain with political currents. This exhibition is the first investigation into the experimental outgrowths of comic abstraction.

Artists in the exhibition are Polly Apfelbaum, Inka Essenhigh, Ellen Gallagher, Arturo Herrera, Michel Majerus, Julie Mehretu, Juan Mu�oz, Takashi Murakami, Rivane Neuenschwander, Philippe Parreno, Gary Simmons, Franz West, and Sue Williams. PUBLICATION: Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making will be accompanied by a major publication of the same name. It will feature a critical essay by curator Roxana Marcoci that analyzes the sources, methods, and ideas behind the works, as well as interviews with the artists, and selected exhibition histories and bibliographies. 9.25 X 12 inches; 160 pages, 104 color illustrations. Hardcover: $39.95. Available in March 2007 at MoMA Stores.