Curated by Laura Hoptman

Modernism just won’t go away. Tomma Abts is perhaps the best of the many painters practicing today who still find infinite resource in the complications of image and surface, of illusion and material. Her small canvases come across as faintly historical, but nonetheless don’t look like anything but themselves. Laura Hoptman brings together fourteen paintings from the past ten years in what promises to be an exhibition of heart-stopping density. The catalogue includes Bruce Hainley and Jan Verwoert, reliably insightful writers taking a shot at the mystery that surrounds the work, despite its apparent matter-of-factness. Let the critics do their best. Travels to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, July 27–Nov. 2.

— Katy Siegel