The experience that led her to switch to digital art began in 1999 when the painter hit upon the idea of creating abstract tableaux, not by wielding pencil and brush, but by devising them on her computer and having the digitized compositions executed on silk.
In "Untitled (Reaper Drone)," a 2010 photograph that Artforum ran on its cover, a desert sunrise is transfigured into an Abstract-Expressionist tableau of crimson, periwinkle, and violet.
One can understand the appeal of adding "Der Freischütz" to the list of Mr. Wilson's productions, which are famous for their abstract, beautifully lit tableaus and carefully stylized approach to stage action.
Impossible to place into one stylistic category, many of the massive pieces this year are singular portraits, or at least figurative, appealing on the whole, and with a handful of abstract and surreal tableaus.
Through tomorrow In the late 1980's, during a period of intense cultural experimentation in China, Wang Du was a member of the Southern Artists Salon, a collective that produced, among other things, abstract theatrical installations with tableau vivant components.
These emotional and tactile works combine a direct expression of organic mathematics with the visual magic of the artist and humanity's penchant for telling its own mythology into graphically bold tableaux of abstract rural poetry.
For its cerebral, abstract and still deeply romantic sound tableau — a kind of sonic Cy Twombly painting — "The Hurt Locker" should win it.
Sergei Paradjanov's "Color of Pomegranates" (1968) avoids biographical imperatives altogether, transforming the verses of the 18th-century troubadour Sayat Nova into surrealist, folkloric tableaus as striking as they are abstract.
The decorative, dollhouse-scale tableaux are being joined by the bolder, more abstract and more defiantly sculptural pieces, such as the giant spore-like orbs of wings that her assistants are prepping for on the other side of the room.
Different vignettes of these natural but visually abstract processes were composed into an experimental film, which was then refitted to the sculpture to create different tableaux vivants for Tearing Shadows.
