From traditional abstract painting to more experimental frameworks, Mid-Atlantic Abstraction is not a survey of abstraction but a gathering of projects by select artists who have a connection to the region and make work loosely under the header. In 1970, two months before he died, noted abstract painter and sculptor Barnett Newman said in an interview with Emile de Antonio in the documentary film Painters Painting, “I was asked what my painting really means in terms of society, in terms of the world, in terms of the situation…Because to the extent that my painting…was an open painting, in the sense that it represented an open world—to that extent I thought, and I still believe, that my work denotes the possibility of an open society, of an open world…” Abstraction then refers to a fluid space where the contemplation of shape, form, sound, and color happens without rules, or guidance, but in the experience itself.