For over twenty years Liliane Tomasko has explored the themes of dreams, sleep, and the unconscious. This book follows the development of her work as a painter. It begins with figurative works in oil on canvas in which she captures the material qualities of unmade beds, piles of clothes, and other melancholy still lifes and somber interiors. It then traces the gradual dissolution of these initial motifs and the emergence of her abstract paintings in which intertwined lines and layers of color are woven into visual structures and materialized as emotions that allow us to look deep into our innermost being.

Creating works with a fascinating range of tone and expression, Sean Scully's oeuvre is a continuous exploration of his core motif of lines and swaths of color. Captivating the observer through an uncertainty of edges and brushstrokes that appear to exalt the materiality of paint, pigment, and abstraction, Scully experiments with a variety of media and materials. Material World provides insight into the artist's practice and stylistic approach, which have evolved through a sustained engagement with the art historical tradition of Formalism. In an in-depth essay, Raphy Sarkissian situates Sean Scully's art in dialogue with selected works of abstract and figurative, modern and pre-modern painting and sculpture, as well as with aesthetic theories. This dialogue translates further into the interplay of the museum's architecture and the Neoclassical sculptures presented alongside Scully's work.