NEW YORK.-On April 9, the New Museum will introduce the first major U.S. solo exhibition of paintings by London-based artist Tomma Abts (born Kiel, Germany, 1967). Abts creates paintings that confound expectation. Small, severe, and abstract, Abts’ work is an antidote to the florid figuration that has dominated the contemporary painting discourse for the last decade. As one of the leaders of a resurgent abstract vocabulary, she has found a language that is not merely abstract, but also absolutist and visionary. “Tomma Abts” includes fifteen paintings created over the past ten years and will be on view through June 29. The exhibition is organized by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator.

Abts’ works are modest in size but extremely ambitious. While other painters have typically ramped up the proportions of their canvases, Abts’ paintings measure a mere 18 7/8 by 15 inches (48 x 38 cm). They are also profoundly nonrepresentational—their meaning only conveyed by color and line, without reference to the already existing visual world. Abts’ colors are often indescribable, and her combinations can be muted or charged, daring viewers to recalibrate their assumptions about color. In the present contemporary art climate, her paintings seem strange, aberrant, if not a bit shocking. In their stab at profundity though, they are also relevant in some fundamental way to our anxious times.

Abts is the recipient of the 2006 Turner Prize, awarded by the Tate Modern in London. One of the most prestigious honors in the contemporary art world, the Turner Prize has made Abts a household name in Great Britain and created curiosity about the artist and her work worldwide. She was included in the 2001 Istanbul Biennial, the 2004 Carnegie International, and the 2006 Berlin Biennial; and in solo exhibitions in Europe at the Kunsthalle, Kiel (2006) and the Kunsthalle, Basel (2005). Since 1999, she has had solo exhibitions in commercial galleries in Berlin, Cologne, and London.

The accompanying monograph Tomma Abts is the first of its kind on the artist and includes reproductions of more than fifty paintings and works on paper. The publication is a study of Abts’ paintings and drawings in the context of contemporary art and the history of abstraction. Co-published by the New Museum and Phaidon Press, London, the book features essays by Los Angeles-based critic Bruce Hainley; Berlin-based critic Jan Verwoert; and Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum. The exhibition travels to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, from July 27–November 2, 2008. “Tomma Abts” is made possible by a grant from the Lily Auchincloss Foundation and gifts from James-Keith (JK) Brown and Eric G. Diefenbach, and Hilary and Peter Hatch. Additional support is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions Fund. Support for the accompanying publication has been provided by the J. McSweeney and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New Museum.