Hard Art at MoMA PS1 asks where painting ends

A light show might seem an unlikely place to begin thinking about painting. But that is a useful question to take into “Hard Art,” the new exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens: What happens to abstraction when color, rhythm and composition no longer stay on a canvas?

The exhibition opened Nov. 5 and runs through March 15, 2027. It brings together more than 90 works by more than 40 Black artists, looking at abstraction in the United States from 1969 to the present. Paintings share the exhibition’s frame with sculpture, video and sound. Rather than offering a single style to recognize, that range gives visitors a proposition to test.

One work identified in the museum’s exhibition materials is Nikita Gale’s “PRIVATE DANCER,” from 2020. MoMA’s collection record describes a light show lasting 44 minutes and 32 seconds, together with trusses, spotlights, cables and a control system. These are the tools that normally help make a performer visible. Here, they are the work.

The history of the piece sharpens that distinction. In an account of its presentation at the California African American Museum, reproduced on Gale’s website, the lights respond to an inaudible soundtrack: Tina Turner’s 1984 album “Private Dancer.” Gale worked with lighting designer Josephine Wang on the programming. The account links the installation to questions about performance and labor.

That background offers a way into the work without pretending to describe its current installation at PS1. A visitor can look at lighting as equipment, but also consider what happens when something designed to support a star becomes the center of attention. Abstraction need not mean that a work has shed its connection to people. It can make those connections harder to see immediately, and more interesting to follow.

“Hard Art” also opens a conversation with PS1’s own history. The museum presented from Feb. 17 to April 6, 1980. Its online archive lists artists including Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sam Gilliam and Maren Hassinger, and preserves installation photographs.