The Half-Life of Abstraction

In abstraction, nothing stays still. Meaning mutates, dissolves, and renews. In this reflection, artist Ritu Raj explores the idea of the half-life of abstraction—the invisible moment when an artwork’s original intention begins to decay, and a new field of perception emerges between viewer and canvas.

Contemporary abstract painting “Waves of Threaded Flame” by Ritu Raj

In physics, a half-life refers to the time it takes for half of a substance to decay, transforming into something else. I borrow this term not for its technical precision, but for its poetic resonance. In my practice as a contemporary abstract artist, the “half-life of abstraction” is a metaphor for the moment when meaning begins to shift—when a work starts to shed its original intention and becomes something else in the eyes of the viewer.

Abstraction is not a fixed language. It’s a dynamic field of perception, full of tension between control and surrender, clarity and ambiguity. Every painting begins with a gesture—intentional, intuitive, or somewhere in between—but once the work enters the world, that gesture begins to dissolve. Interpretations proliferate. Associations creep in. Emotional resonance either deepens or drifts. And somewhere along that timeline, we cross an invisible threshold: the half-life.

The half-life of abstraction is the point at which the emotional or philosophical charge of a work begins to evolve beyond the artist’s hand, and into a shared, unstable field of meaning. It is the moment when texture turns into metaphor, when color shifts into memory. The painting, once a direct imprint of presence, becomes a mirror for the unconscious projections of others.

In my Organic Movement series, I work with twine and pigment to create paintings that are less like images and more like temporal events. They live in tension, not resolution. I am interested in how long a mark resists interpretation. How long it stays strange. How long it hums with presence before being reduced to a visual style or decorative object. That timeline—the emotional decay curve, if you will—is what I think of as the half-life of abstraction.

At a cultural level, abstract languages also have half-lives. Movements rise and fall. What once shocked becomes familiar. What was once a radical gesture becomes interior décor. This decay is inevitable, but not tragic. It’s part of the life cycle of meaning. The goal, for me, is not to freeze an abstract gesture in time, but to keep it alive long enough to invite reflection, not explanation.

In the end, abstraction does not die. It dissolves into perception. It asks to be re-seen, re-felt, re-understood. Its half-life is a gift—an invitation to return again and again, finding something new in what once appeared formless.