ABSTRACT & CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY NYC
Where Abstraction Meets the Poetic and the Personal
Abstraction at Arco Gallery
Abstraction has been central to Arco Gallery since its founding—not as a stylistic position, but as a way of thinking. We are drawn to artists who use abstraction to slow perception, deepen attention, and test how meaning can emerge through color, material, rhythm, and structure rather than depiction. The artists we represent approach abstraction from different histories and sensibilities, yet they share a belief in painting and photography as lived experiences—works that unfold over time and resist instant consumption. Our program favors abstraction that remains porous: open to memory, landscape, biology, and emotion, rather than sealed into formal doctrine.
Approaches Rather Than Schools
Rather than grouping artists by rigid movements, we think in terms of approaches—how abstraction is activated, what it asks of the viewer, and what it carries from the world beyond the canvas. The following groupings are not boundaries but points of entry, reflecting recurring concerns across our program.
Gestural & Lyrical Abstraction
In these works, abstraction unfolds through movement, layering, and atmosphere. Gesture becomes a way of recording time, memory, or sensation, while color and rhythm guide emotional resonance. The paintings often retain echoes of landscape or music, without resolving into representation.
Chromatic and Meditative Fields
Here abstraction is distilled into color relationships, spatial balance, and light. These works ask for sustained viewing, rewarding attention through subtle shifts in tone and surface. The experience is contemplative rather than expressive, emphasizing presence over narrative.
Material & Material and Process-Driven Abstraction
Orazio De Gennaro · Ruggero Vanni
Material is not a vehicle but a subject. Earth pigments, layered surfaces, and tactile processes anchor abstraction in physical memory and place. These works carry a strong sense of history—both personal and art historical—while remaining resolutely contemporary.
Surrealist and Metaphoric Abstraction
Abstraction here becomes a space of transformation, where memory, biology, and myth intersect. Figurative traces surface and dissolve, creating complex spatial and temporal structures that resist linear reading and invite associative thought.
Abstraction Within a Shared Philosophy
At Arco Gallery, abstraction, figuration, and photography are not treated as separate territories but as parallel ways of engaging with perception, memory, and lived experience. Whether working through paint, image, or form, the artists we represent share an interest in how meaning emerges over time rather than at first glance. These practices speak to one another through a common attention to atmosphere, structure, and the emotional charge of material, encouraging viewers to move across disciplines with continuity rather than contrast.
Fine Art Photography - Figurative Art - All represented artists
Encountering Abstraction at Arco
Arco Gallery is open by appointment in the cultural core of SoHo, New York. We invite collectors and visitors to experience abstraction slowly, through private viewings that allow for comparison, dialogue, and thoughtful consideration of how a work might live in a personal space. Appointments may take place in our loft gallery or online, and studio visits can be arranged when appropriate. To learn more about our philosophy, visit the About page .
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