Expanding the boundaries of abstract art, Haggerty creates his own distinct visual language through the exploration of form and perception. Since the late 1990s, he has created paintings and drawings that actively engage the viewer through the recurrent use of line and color to convey movement. In previous works, alter- nate light and dark lines are hand-painted on canvas, wood and – more recently – aluminum, using stencils; the lines become actively dimensional, reshaping and animating the surface they are painted on. Over time, the artist’s practice has evolved to encompass shaped canvases and three-dimensional work. Taking the pared-down language of abstraction associated with Formalism as a point of departure, Haggerty draws on influences ranging from Minimalism to Pop and Op Art. The artist’s recent works are three-dimensional wall reliefs, devoid of painted lines for the first time. In a similar vein to his previous paintings, Haggerty continues to be interested in creating work with two coinciding perspectives as ribbon-like forms fold and curve to show two contradictory views in one plane. Haggerty’s compositions appear almost impossible to the eye; in asserting a spatial presence, yet distorting illusory perceptions, these objects propose, and provoke, new ways of experiencing three-dimensionality.
First extensive monograph
Living in Berlin, Terry Haggerty (* 1970 in London) creates large-format paintings, drawings and wall paintings that expand the vocabulary of abstraction: he combines the reducing, serial principles of Minimal Art with the effects and experimental approaches of Op Art. In its reduction to mostly monochrome color and a radical simplification of the form, its patterns of regular stripes and lines on a flat surface unfold the illusion of spatial-geometric objects. The technical perfection in the execution reinforces the impression of the three-dimensional and gives the impression that the work is mechanically produced. Transcend presents the artist’s oeuvre from the late 1990s to the present and represents his ingenious synthesis between the pursuit of abstract art for the essential and the sober play of perception and eye illusion in optical art.

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