Torture Concrete: Jean-Luc Moulène and the Protocol of Abstraction

Torture Concrete: Jean-Luc Moulène and the Protocol of Abstraction Reza Negarestani September 2014Sequence Press Perfect-bound, 6x8in, 30pp. ISBN 978-0-9832169-7-1   Reza Negarestani’s essay is published in conjunction with Jean-Luc Moulène’s exhibition, Torture Concrete, September 7 – October 26, 2014 at Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York. The text emerged out of a number of conversations between the writer and artist around the theme of abstraction both as a multi-faceted project in the general domain of thought and as a specific process of artistic experimentation. Negarestani sharply asserts abstraction’s origins as the dialectic between form (mathematics) and sensible matter (physics) and its otherwise flat interpretation in art history, and presents us with the redemptive possibilities for its enrichment and diversification through the lens of artistic practice. Negarestani calls into question the “self-reflexive history of art” as having embezzled this singular definition of abstra