Josh Lilley is delighted to open Tetrachord, an exhibition of four artists from Vienna curated by Francesco Stocchi and Jasper Sharp.

In their painting, drawing, etching, photography, sculpture and video, Svenja Deininger, Michael Part, Sarah Pichlkostner and Nadim Vardag all share a deep interest in the language of abstraction. The exhibition aims to draw attention to the looseness and superficiality of the term, and emphasize the breadth of different approaches that it encompasses.

Within the gallery the viewer moves between the analytical (Vardag), the associative and intuitive (Deininger), the process-based (Part) and the sensory, material and spatial (Pichlkostner). The works all have a distinctly handmade feel to them, revealing the processes by which they were made and the changes to which they were subjected along the way. They are inherently quiet, often fragile and sensitive.

A sense of the geometric appears throughout, specifically in terms of surface rather than form. While observed from different vantage points, an interest in colour is also identifiable. The works all share a certain openness, and a reluctance to be one thing more than another.

Svenja Deininger (b. 1974, Vienna, Austria) graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2003, and the Kunstakademie Münster in 2000.

Michael Part (b. 1979, Austria)

Sarah Pichlkostner (b.1988, St. Johann im Pongau, Austria) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and De Ateliers, Amsterdam.

Nadim Vardag (b. 1980, Regensburg, Austria)